Towards the New Order AN EXHORTATION By Hazrat MIRZA GHULAM AHMAD The God-sent Reformer of this Age www.aaiil.org 1944 PUBLICITY COMMITTEE AHMADIYYA ANJUMAN ISHAATI ISLAM LAHOREIn the following Pages we propose to point out the remedy for the devouring evil of the times. It is plain that the marvellous material progress of the world is more than counterbalanced by its deplorable spiritual decline. The souls of men have so far fallen away from their natural nobility that they eschew pure truths and shun their very contact. It seems as if some forcible energy were dragging them down with an ac celerated motion into the sink of iniquity and the lowest depths of vice. Such an entire change has passed over the intellects of men that what is spiritually ugliest and most detestable is admired for the dazzling beauty of its polish. Tender conscience, that inward monitor of man, feels that it is falling off from its natural purity under the demoralizing influence of some unseen power. The poison is so wide-spread that it has destroyed almost a whole world. Pure and noble truths are laughed at and trifled with, and a turning to God and total resignation to His will is looked upon as an absurdity. Every soul upon earth seems to be bent upon earthly cares and advantages, as if some hidden power had constrained it to that course. Such is the evil attraction of vice, and the truth is, as we have already pointed out, that there are attrac tions working everywhere in the world. The efficiency or inefficiency of an attraction depends upon the certainty or uncertainty of our views with regard to any matter ; and if the certainty is greater, the attraction too is more powerful. It isa principle the truth of which is no less unquestionable in the spiritual than in the material world, that an attraction can only be counter- acted by its opposite, if the latter is more powerful than the former. Since the world in its Present state is being dragged down under the influence of an. evil attraction, it can never raise itself up to the level and soar into the higher regions, unless an opposite and more powerful attraction from heaven Overpoises the existing earthly tendencies