If one considers the backwardness of the Islamic world at that time in relation to the West and its resulting subjection to the European Powers, and the accompanying feelings of hopelessness and helplessness on the part of the educated Muslims in particular, it is not difficult to see why Bediuzzaman's message of hope and certain predictions supported by argument of the future supremacy of the Qur'an and Islamic civilization met with the enthusiastic response that they did. The Sermon is in the form of "Six Words" taken from "the pharmacy of the Qur'an", which constitute the cure or medicine for the "six dire sicknesses" which Bediuzzaman had diagnosed as having arrested the development of the Islamic world. He described it as follows:

"In the conditions of the present time in these lands, I have learnt a lesson in the school of mankind's social life and I have realized that what has allowed Europeans to fly towards the future on progress while it arrested us and kept us, in respect of material development, in the Middle Ages are six dire sicknesses. The sicknesses are these:

"Firstly, the coming to life and rise of despair and hopelessness in social life. Secondly, the death of trutltfulness in social and political life. Thirdly, love of enmity. Fourthly, not knowing the luminous bonds that bind the believers to one another. Fifthly, despotism, which spreads like various contagious diseases. And sixthly, restricting endeavour to what is personally beneficial.”

Bediuzzaman had started by quoting the verse: Do not despair of God's mercy, and the Hadith: "I came to perfect good moral qualities", which provide the theme of the six Words of which the Sermon is composed. The First Word is Hope, and we shall describe it in some detail for in it Bediuzzaman sets forth the reasons for his optimism concerning the future of the Islamic world. It consists of "one and a half preliminary arguments" to support his "firm conviction" that "the future shall be Islam's, and Islam's alone. and the truths of the Qur'an and belief shall be sovereign." The premises of his arguments are that "the truths of Islam are able to progress both materially, and in moral and non-material matters, and possess