Claims and Teachings - Ahmad The Promised Messiah and Mahdi — Page 224
224 prayers and supplications to their idols and deities. Walking into a ward of the Shias, one would fiad every door witnessing the truth of this couplet: "I have five saints with whose names I extinguish the fire of the burning plague, viz. , Mustafa (i. e^ the Holy Prophet), Murtaza (i. e. , Ali). Fatirna and their two sons (&. . , Hassan and Husain). " My tutor, a learned Shia, used to say that the only remedy for plague is ^y and \^j i. e^ excessive love, bordering upon worship, of the Imam of the house of Ali, and excessive hatred, displayed in abuses and imprecations, of the other companions of the Holy Prophet. This is the Shia amulet for the plague. It is also said that the first appearance of the plague in Bombay was looked upon as a miracle of I-marn Husain, for its first victims were the Hindus who happened to have had a quarrel with the Shias. But when it levelled its attucks against the votaries of there idol, the cries of " Husain " began to die away. Passing on to the Christian religious view of the plague, we notice a hand-bill issued by Revd. H. M. Weitbrecbt as expressing the view of a Christian Religious Society. It also suggests a remedy for the extirpation of the plague which it regards as the only true safeguard, all others being merely useless. Our intelligent readers might have guessed it It consists in taking the man Jesus for God and believing in the efficacy of his blood. The Arya, sect of Hinduism lays stress on the point that this Divine visitation in wrath is owing to people having given up the Yedas. All men should believe, the Aryas assert, in the truth of the Hindu scriptures and look upon all the righteous prophets of God as impostors, and then the plague is sure to vanish.