Life of Ahmad — Page 287
as PREACHES UNTO EAST AND WEST 287 expecting a warrior Mahdi and a Messiah who should descend from the skies; and this man claimed to be not a warrior but a peaceful and peace-making Mahdi and taught that the Mahdi and Messiah were one and the same person who was not to come from the skies but was to appear from the earth; and, strangest of all, that he was the person who was both Mahdi and Messiah, a person who possessed no distinctive mark of learning, rank or honour. Again, travelling to distant countries requires money, and this man had at the time a following of forty or fifty persons, all of whom save one or two in comparatively easy circumstances were extremely poor, earning on an average less than five shillings a week, out of which they had to provide for all the needs of their relatives and themselves. Now in these circumstances, living 6,000 miles away from Europe, in a country which formed part of the British empire and which was at that time in a condition of extreme political degradation, in a province which was regarded as the least intellectual and most backward in India and which is situated at a distance of several hundred miles from the ocean, being resident of a village which was eleven miles from the nearest railway station and which was at that time served only twice a week by the post, the postmaster being also the village schoolmaster, and which could boast of no higher educational institution than a vernacular primary school (for such was Qadian at the time), this man proclaimed that God would propagate his