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 of Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan and his Aligarh reformers young Moslems seemed to be losing their faith altogether; but at the same time he was deadly opposed to the lifeless leadership of the mullahs., or Moslem clergy.

The more he read and meditated on this situation the more he was convinced that it was not peculiar to India alone, but that similar conditions prevailed throughout the Moslem world. Further, his close contact with the people of the two other great faiths of India, the Hindus and the Christians, enabled him to sense their spiritual hopes and aspirations.

Gradually it dawned upon him that the time was ripe for a new spiritual leadership in Islam, and about the year 1890 Mirza Ghulam Ahmad announced to the world that he had been called by Allah to undertake a special divine mission. He declared that he was the promised Mahdi of the Moslems, the great champion of Islam, who, the Traditions say, will come in the last days and convert the whole world to the true faith. Knowing that the Hindus looked for the coming of a new incarnation of the god Vishnu who would usher in a new age, he appealed to them also to accept him as their long expected savior. Turning to the Christians he announced that he was the Messiah Jesus who had returned to earth, and thus in him the second coming of Christ had been fulfilled! Indeed he so fully convinced himself and his followers that he was the Messiah that he formally took that title. Even to this day his sons, who succeeded him,