The missionary nodded, looking satisfied with the answer, and left the hall.
Following a successful time in Ratnagiri, Sundar headed farther south. The first thing he noticed was how hot it was getting. Sundar was used to the much cooler temperatures of the Punjab plain and the Himalayas, where even if it did get hot, it was a dry heat and he could find respite under a shady tree. But in southern India it was hot and humid, and there was nowhere one could escape the oppressive clamminess. Indeed, Sundar explained in a letter to a friend in the north that he felt as though he were a dissolving lump of salt. He found that as a result of the heat, he had to rest more than he was used to. Still, he kept himself busy preaching the gospel to everyone he came into contact with.
In southern India Sundar encountered Christians from the Syrian Church. This church traced its history back to the first century, when, tradition said, Thomas, one of Jesus’ original disciples, came to southern India, where he preached the gospel and eventually founded a church. Sundar was intrigued by the church’s long history, but he was also disappointed at the way the church had lost sight of the message of the gospel. So at a meeting of young people from the church he challenged them:
O young men, awake and see how many souls are daily perishing around you. Is it not your duty to save them? Be brave soldiers of Christ. Go forward in full armor. Crush Satan’s work, and victory shall be yours.… [Christ] has given you a precious opportunity to be saved and to save others. If you are careless now, you will never get another chance, for you will never pass through the field of battle again. The day is fast approaching when you will see the martyrs in their glory, who gave their health, wealth, and life to win souls for Christ. They have done much. Oh, may we not blush in that day.
Sundar wondered how these young people would receive his message. He had his answer at the next meeting, where twenty thousand people turned out to hear him preach. And at a third meeting thirty-two thousand Syrian Christians came to hear him speak.
Finally Sundar made his way to Madras on the southeast coast of India, arriving there on New Year’s Day 1918. Although he did not know anyone in the city, he was soon involved in a whirlwind of preaching and meetings. Many of these meetings were held in traditional churches, but wherever Sundar went, he seemed to attract a crowd. As a result he found himself also preaching under palmyra trees, in village squares outside Hindu temples, and on dry riverbeds. At these venues anywhere from five hundred to ten thousand people would gather to hear him speak.
People seemed particularly struck with the simple illustrations Sundar drew from nature to illustrate his points. In one sermon Sundar told his audience that they could not deal with sin simply by cleaning up the outer practices in their lives. He illustrated the point by saying, “In every home there are spiders. Many of us, trying to get rid of sin, are like housewives who destroy the spiders’ webs without destroying the spiders.”
At another meeting someone in the audience asked him, “How can my poor prayers help anyone when I am so sinful?” Sundar replied, “The sun draws salt water from the sea, yet when it falls again to the earth, the water is clear and pure and drinkable. The sun has cleaned it. So it is with God and our prayers.”
After each of the meetings, a throng of seekers followed Sundar, asking questions and begging to hear more about Jesus Christ. Sundar did his best to speak with them all. And it was not uncommon for him to be awakened in the middle of the night by some prominent Hindu man who wanted to talk about Christianity but was afraid to be seen speaking publicly to a Christian sadhu. Sundar welcomed such men into his room and answered whatever questions they posed.
It was not only seekers wanting to know more about Christianity that kept Sundar awake other nights. Sundar often spent the night in prayer, gathering spiritual strength for the following day.
Sundar’s simple and straightforward style of preaching and living not only drew crowds to hear him speak but also attracted the attention of the news media. While Sundar was in Madras, a reporter from the local newspaper attended one of his meetings. The following morning Sundar’s host read to him from the newspaper what the reporter had said of the meeting. According to the reporter, Sundar was
a tall young man delivering his message with the fire of a prophet and the power of an apostle. The audience hung on his lips, and never for a moment allowed their eyes to stray from the central figure. The Sadhu was unlike all mental pictures formed of him—he was incomparably superior to all I had thought of him. As I heard the sweet words issue from the lips of the Sadhu, who stood before me a visible symbol of the spiritual culture of the East, set aglow in the resplendent light of the Gospel—a vessel of eastern art and beauty chosen by the Lord, and filled with His Spirit—my skepticism vanished like clouds before the rising sun, and the dreams of my life seemed to touch the borders of the real. The problem of Christianity in India is solved, and the Sadhu has solved it.
Sundar felt himself blush as the newspaper article was read to him. He certainly did not see himself in those terms. He was simply a young man obeying the call he felt God had placed on his heart. And he told his host, “I seek to draw no man to me, only to reveal to them a glimpse of the Lord I serve. Jesus told His disciples, if they would lift Him up from the earth, He would draw all men unto Him. Praise God that is true.”
As his stay in Madras drew to a close, Sundar expected to return to northern India, where it was time to prepare for crossing into Tibet for another summer among the Tibetan people. But those plans had to wait. Still more people in southern India and beyond wanted a chance to see and hear Sadhu Sundar Singh.
Chapter 12
To Tibet Once Again
With so many people wanting to meet him and hear him preach, Sundar spent the next four months traveling to Vellore, Trichur, Calicut, and various small towns in southern India. At the end of this time Sundar was exhausted. He felt like every ounce of strength had been sucked out of him, and he gratefully accepted the invitation of a Christian lawyer to spend a month in solitude in his summerhouse in the mountains.
While at the summerhouse, Sundar spent several hours each day teaching himself English from a book. He realized that one of the most tiring aspects of preaching in the south was speaking in Hindustani and then waiting while it was translated into Tamil or one of the other languages of southern India. Many people in the south spoke English, and Sundar longed for the day when he would be able to talk directly with them. Even if he could not, it would be much easier to find a translator to put his English into another language than one who translated from Hindustani.
At the summerhouse he also caught up on his correspondence. Many of the letters Sundar received were heartening. One read, “Ever since you left Calicut, I have been looking back with gratitude on those blessed days you spent with us.… We are again reminded of those days when last week a Mohammedan young man came to us and said he had decided to become a Christian as the result of listening to you.”
Another letter from Calicut reported, “When you were in Calicut the sub-postmaster heard you, or heard God’s voice through you. Some days after, he saw Christ calling him in a dream. He comes every day to read with me. He says he wants to be baptised and fully follow Christ.”
As people in the surrounding area learned that Sundar was staying nearby, they began to visit the house, either to ask questions or just to get a glimpse of him. One man who came was a magistrate. He was very troubled, and Sundar invited the man to sit with him in the back garden. The two of them started talking, and the magistrate said, “Sadhu, I know your time is valuable, and I do not want to take up too much of it. I have spent my life studying religions, and there is one problem which none of them can answer. I would like your opinion on in it.”
“Ask your question,” Sundar replied, “and I will tell you if my Lord Jesus has given me any light on the subject.”
The magistrate continued. “Every day thousands of men are born and every day thousands of them die. What is the profit of all this to God? I am inclined to believe that there is no meaning in it but that the various elements come together and then get dissolved as one of the processes of nature.”
Sundar thought for a moment and then replied, “Sahib, you are a learned man, and I am not. I am not sure I can satisfy you, but with the little grace God has given me, I shall try to answer your question. Once I was sitting in meditation on a hill for some months. In the valley below I saw busy farmers at work, day after day. First I watched them plough the fields; then they manured them. When the rains came, they sowed seed. The seeds came up, and the plants grew. The farmers watered the plants and weeded them. The corn plants produced ears, then blades, and then full corn. As the corn ripened, the farmers took turns walking the fields at night, making sure that no wild animals or men ate the nearly ripened corn.
“Then one day the care of the corn was over. The farmers brought their scythes and began cutting the sheaths of corn, which they had so carefully tended all those months. The plants could have well asked, ‘What is the profit of all this? Why did the farmers take such good care of us, only to cut us down in the end like this?’
“But you see, my friend, the plants did not know what the farmers knew. We may not know why we are born and why we die, but God does.”
The magistrate nodded. “You have spoken well, Sadhu, and given me much to think about.”
That night, and for many nights afterward, Sundar prayed that the magistrate would come to understand that God knew the reason why he had been born.
After six weeks of rest, Sundar received an invitation from a Methodist minister to come to Ceylon to preach. A ticket for the short voyage to Ceylon was included with the invitation, and Sundar decided to go.
At Uduvil, in Ceylon, the struggling American Methodist mission had built a special shelter of coconut fronds and had sent out invitations for people to come and hear Sundar preach. When Sundar arrived at the place, he found two thousand people waiting for him: adults and children, Christians, Hindus, and Buddhists, all of whom wanted to hear his message.
Each successive meeting in Ceylon attracted larger and larger crowds, and many people compared Sundar to Jesus and His wandering ministry. A group of young men followed Sundar from one preaching spot to the next, asking him questions and wanting him to pray for them.
Once, as Sundar sat meditating under a tree, a nobleman approached him. “Sadhu, you are the one all India is interested in. May I sit and talk?” the nobleman asked.
“Most certainly,” Sundar replied.
The nobleman took a place on the ground and sat cross-legged opposite Sundar. “You have proved that you can draw men of every faith to you,” the nobleman went on. “And you have shown that there is a measure of truth in every religion, that all roads lead to God. The Emperor Akbar built a great temple to all religions four hundred years ago. And the founder of your Sikh religion, Guru Nanak, discovered truth among the Hindu and Muslim faiths. But the time has come for another prophet, a guru who will draw all India to his feet. There are errors that must be purged from all religions so that the real truth might come forth. What is needed is a teacher who can unite the best of all religions and discard the unworthy. Jesus in this new religion would be the greatest revelation of God the world has ever seen, though Hinduism, Islam, and Buddhism would not be discredited or discarded. And you, Sadhu Sundar Singh, would be the prophet of this new way of Jesus. You would go down in history as a greater prophet than Guru Nanak, the holy men of Hinduism, even Mohammed.”
