244 THE REV. H. D. GRISWOLD, M.A., PH.D., ON 



As the Lord Jesus Christ was a man of peace, so he who has 

 come in His spirit and power as the Promised Messiah must 

 also be a man of peace, for he has " inherited the perfection of 

 Jesus Christ." Such is the theory which underlies the Mirza 

 Qadiani's polemic against the doctrine of a bloody Mahdi and 

 the doctrine of jihad. As he says : "To believe in me as the 

 promised Messiah and Mahdi is to disbelieve in the popular- 

 doctrine oi jihad" (Memorial to Sir William Mackworth Young, 

 March 5th, 1898). Thus it would seem that through his claim 

 to be at once the promised Mahdi and the promised Messiah 

 the Mirza of Qadian desires to focus all the Messianic 

 expectations of Islam upon his own person. At the same time 

 " to disbelieve in the popular doctrine of jihad " is certainly an 

 excellent thing, provided it be sincere. 



But the supreme and central claim of the Mirza of Qadian 

 is that he is The Promised Messiah. As such he signs himself 

 in his numerous writings. His claims to be the promised 

 Mahdi of the Muhammadans and the promised Avatar of the 

 Hindus are relatively insignificant in comparison with his 

 claim to be the promised Messiah. What does he mean by 

 this claim ? He does not mean that he is the very person of 

 Jesus Christ re- incarnated in India, but rather that he has 

 come in the spirit and power of Christ. His conception is 

 this that just as, according to the interpretation of Jesus, John 

 the Baptist was the Elijah which was to come (Matthew xi, 

 14), because he came " in the spirit and power of Elijah " 

 (Luke i, 17), so he, the Mirza, is the Messiah which is to come, 

 because he is come in the <; spirit and power " of Christ. But 

 note the logical consequences of this claim. If the Mirza 

 Qadian! is the promised Messiah, then (1) his appearance is 

 the fulfilment of all the Bible promises which speak of Christ's 

 Second Coming, (2) no literal coming again of the "same" 

 Jesus of Nazareth is to be expected, and (3) the expectation of 

 a literal Second Coming of Christ on the part of Christians is 

 based on misinterpretation. 



As clearing the way for the doctrine of his own Messiahship, 

 the Mirza Qadian! holds that Jesus Christ did not die on the 

 Cross, but, on the contrary, that He came to India, in order to 

 preach to the descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes in Afghanistan 

 and Kashmir, and died a natural death in Kashmir; where his 

 tomb exists unto this day, His grounds for the first conclusion, 

 viz., that Jesus did not die on the cross, are as follows : 

 (1) Certain inferences based upon the Gospel narratives to 

 the effect that Jesus when He was removed from the cross was 



