Fountain of Christianity — Page 69
69 Will you take its corpse to Japan or will you offer it to Europe? Who would be foolish enough to fall for a 'dead' religion which, when compared to older religions, is found to be without any blessings and spirituality? In those religions, even women—such as Moses as ’ mother and Mary as —have received Divine revelations, but even your men cannot equal them! The fact, O naïve and blind people, is that our Holy Prophet sa , and our lord and master, (countless blessings be upon him), surpassed all Prophets in his spiritual influ- ence. The influence of all past Prophets came to an end at a certain point and their people and their religions have no trace of life left in them, but the spiritual influence of the Holy Prophet sa will endure to the Last Day. For this rea- son, this umma does not require that a Messiah should come into it from outside; for, under the Holy Prophet’s sa benign influence, even an ordinary man can become a Messiah, just as God has done in my case. Let me now return to the original discussion and state the philosophy behind the Islamic concept of salvation. While, on the one hand, there has been placed in man’s nature a poison which eternally draws him towards sin, at the same time his nature has also been endowed with an antidote for this poison, which is the love of God. Both these forces have continued to influence man ever since his creation. The poisonous influence leads him towards chas- tisement, but the antidote, which is the power of Divine love, consumes all the sins as fire consumes straw. It is