Claims and Teachings - Ahmad The Promised Messiah and Mahdi — Page 374
374 hitn and circulated false reports concerning him* At last he was expelled from his home in India, and to this day the Hindus affect to look with contempt upon the great success to which the religion of Buddha attained* But as Jesus said, "A Prophet is not without honour save in his own country and house" (Matt- 13: 57), and Buddha also attained a marvellous success in his mission after he had gone to another country. At present one-third of the human race is said to own this religion, the centre of its activity still being China and Japan, though it has spread as far as Russia and America* To revert to the original subject, when the followers of one religion were ignorant of the religions prevailing in other countries, it followed as a natural consequence that every community depended on its own book and its own creed as the sole re- pository of truth. The result of this dependence was that when the inhabitants of different countries began to have intercourse With one another and when one people came to know the creed followed by another, each found it difficult to approve of the alien creeds. Fancy had invested every religion with certain peculiari- ties and excellences and it was no easy task to divest it of the imaginary excellences which it was supposed to possess. Conse- quently the adherents of every religion gave themselves up to the refutation of the rival religions- The followers of Zoroaster, for instance, affirmed that there was no religion comparable with their creed, that prophethood was confined to the Zoroastrian dispensation and that their scriptures were the oldest of all books so much so that even the Yedas paled into insignificance when compared with their scriptures in point of. antiquity. The He- brews again were not behind any other people in claiming peculiarities for their religious system. They want BO far as to fix Syria as the laud where Divine Throne was laid, never to be