The Influence of Sundar Singh
A. J. APPASAMY
the grave so that the body could rest in between.
It was into this simplest of graves that the Bishop's remains were lowered.
The Rev. K. C. Verghese continues to be the Head of the Tadagam Ashram.
All its property, including five hundfed acres on the Attapadi Hills, is managed by a registered Trust.
Bishop and Mrs Walsh have left their property to the Ashram. oe
THE INFLUENCE OF SUNDAR SINGH
I often recall the eagerness with which I went to hear Sundar Singh preach in the cities of Europe in 1921 and 1922.
Even the largest church used to be crowded and many had to leave for lack of room. I always tried to get a seat from where I could see the Sadhu well.
He told us in simple words with many illustrations and parables how he lived daily for Christ and how ready he was to die for Him.
A man of great humility, he had a deeply rooted faith in God. His long hours of contemplation gave him
. a wonderful serenity and an altogether other-worldly appearance.
Indeed many thought he looked very much like Jesus, who had met him as He had met St Paul on the road to Damascus and who now had full control over his life.
For some reason there is no complete collection of his sermons though small editions of his sermons were published from time to time.
His friends Friedrich Heiler and C. F. Andrews did contemplate preparing an anthology, but nothing was done.
It would have been interesting to compare Sundar Singh the preacher with Sundar Singh the writer.
Sundar Singh wrote seven little books.
They are:
At the Master's Feet (1922).
Reality and Religion (1923).
The Search After Reality (1924).
The Spiritual Life (1925).
The Spiritual World (1926).
With and Without Christ (1928).
The Real Life (Date of writing not known).
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THE INFLUENCE OF SUNDAR SINGH
These books have been translated into forty languages and read by millions of people.
They were out of print for many years.
They have been published again and are now available from the Christian Literature Society, Madras.
They contain the sum and substance of his teaching.
Sundar Singh taught that man is created for -fellowship with God.
This is the purpose of creation.
Every one is called to enter into the joy of this fellowship, which is higher and nobler than every other joy in the world.
One should not seek this fellowship selfishly.
One should get others also to enter it. Such a life of bliss begins here and now and lasts all through eternity.
Sundar Singh was emphatic in his belief that God in His infinite' love is always offering to man the wonder and glogy of such fellowship with Him.~ Only we in our folly, wilfulness and sin are constantly rejecting His offer.
The writings of Sundar Singh are the outcome of the joy he personally experienced in Christ and the continuous endeavour he made to bring others into it.
An important point is brought out in his devotional books.
Sundar Singh held that, not due to any goodness on his part but because of His supreme love, God revealed Himself again and again to His servant.
He believed that in moments of ecstasy he learnt more about God than he would have done by years of study in a Theological College. In Geneva Sundar Singh was asked about his theological education.
In answer to this question he said:
When I spent hours at His Feet in prayer, then I found enlightenment, and God taught me so many things that I cannot express them even in my own language.
Sit at the Master's Feet in prayer; it is the greatest Theological College in this world. We know about theology, but He is the source of theology itself.
He explains in a few seconds a truth that has taken me years to understand.
Whatever I have learnt has been learnt only at His Feet.
Not only learning, but life, I have found at His Feet in prayer.
(Sundar Singh: A Biography, p. 38).
The substance of these books came to him in hours of contemplation.
There are many problems in human lite.
Sundar Singh was troubled about them, like all deeply religious people.
It was during these hours of ecstasy (not by strenuous thought or hard study) that many of these difficulties were removed.
The
A. J. APPASAMY
reader of these books can come to his own conclusion as to whether God does clearly illumine in this way the hearts of men who obey
Him and follow Him.
We must judge Sundar Singh's ecstasies by the fruits of his life—his renunciation, his complete devotion to Christ and his eager, loving service of men.
Dr Friso Melzer, a former Basel Mission worker in India, has done a substantial service to the Christian Church by translating into German six of the devotional books of Sundar Singh and publishing them as a compact and well-bound omnibus volume.
He has written an introduction to each book and provided scholarly notes on difficult points of Indian philosophy and religion. When
I last heard in 1967, 10,500 copies of the omnibus volume had been sold.
The publishers are Evang. Missions Verlag, Stuttgart, Germany.
One of my major interests has been to spread a knowledge of Sundar Singh's life and teaching as widely as possible.
This work has absorbed much of my time and energy.
When I was Bishop and took a month's holiday at Kodaikanal in 1955 I wrote a little book on Sundar Singh to be published in World Christian Books.
The number of Christians in the world who can read is steadily increasing and it is necessary to provide them with reading material.
The basic texts are first published in England and then translated into various languages.
The General Editor of the series was Bishop Stephen Neill at that time.
He urged me from Geneva to write a book on Sundar Singh, pointing out that his teaching had great relevance for the present time with its tension and anxiety.
The book consisted of a long biographical introduction, followed by selections from the unpublished writings of Sundar
Singh.
It came out from the Lutterworth Press in London with the title The Cross is Heaven.
In this book I tried to bring out a leading idea in the life and teaching of Sundar Singh—the idea that all suffering is bliss tc the Christian who lives in fellowship with Christ.
Up to the end of 1964, 11,205 copies were sold and the book was translated into four languages—Arabic, Chinese,
Sinhalese and Tamil.
It has now been translated into Gujarati also.
Dr Cecil Northcott, the Editor of the Lutterworth Press, London, had accepted the manuscript of my book Sundar Singh:
A Biography, but found it too long and asked my permission to shorten it.
I said, "Yes, you may reduce its length but be sure to
THE INFLUENCE OF SUNDAR SINGH
show clearly that he was a man of prayer.' And he agreed. He was particularly careful to carry out this instruction.
The book was priced at thirty shillings a copy.
Most people {certainly in India) cannot afford to buy a book at that price.
The Lutterworth Press were not willing to print it again as they did not think there was sufficient demand for a second edition.
After considerable correspondence and negotiations, an Indian edition was published by the C.L.S. at a much cheaper price in 1966.
In 1922 Dr Nathan Soderblom was the Archbishop of Uppsala.
He was one of the ecumenical leaders of his generation.
A man of wide scholarship, he had an alert mind and he realiged that Sundar Singh had a genuine contribution to make to the World
Church.
Sundar Singh's was a distinctively Indian soul and it was good to see how it blossomed into new beauty under the touch of Christ.
When he heard that Sundar Singh was visiting Sweden he invited him to come and stay with him for ten days in his palace.
They had many intimate talks about spiritual problems.
Soderblom felt that in The Sadhu Canon Streeter and I tried too much to assess him as a systematic theologian. It was the Archbishop's belief that this was a wrong method of estimating him.
The right method would be to regard him as throwing out a number of valuable theological ideas without seeking to see how they cohered into a system.
The Archbishop himself wrote a Swedish book entitled Sundar Singhs Budskap.
This book has not yet been translated into English.
About 1961 the Mehr Licht Publishers (Hamburg, Germany) sent me some of their German books.
As they publish books by Oral Roberts and William Branham I think they are Pentecostal publishers.
They are doing much to spread the teaching of Sundar Singh.
They have brought out a large edition of The Sadhu in German.
This book went out of print some years ago and from time to time I receive enquiries as to where it is available.
I am glad these publishers have now made it once more available.
They have also published forty-eight thousand copies of Visions of the Spiritual World.
This book has attracted much attention in English.
The future life is a subject of perennial interest and many people have been eager to read what Sundar
Singh has to say about it.
A. J. APPASAMY
But I am not happy about their pamphlet on the Maharishi ot Kailash.
The cover is very attractive and shows the snow-clad Himalayas in all their glory. There has always been much interest among some people in the Maharishi of Kailash.
At ene time Sundar Singh did write at great length about him.
He was deeply stirred by this man of God living in a cave on the Himalayas and spending all his time in prayer for others.
The Maharishi claimed to be three hundred years old and Sundar Singh repeated this claim far and wide. His own integrity was called in question.
People began asking 'Is there really a Maharishi?
Or is Sundar Singh making it all up? Why is it that no one else has seen him?'
In later years Sundar Singh was so troubled by these questions that he ceased to talk about the Maharishi and said, 'I have very great respect for him but my work in the world is to preach Christ, not the Maharishi'.
This pamphlet closes with this saying of Sundar Singh but I wish it had not been printed as it raises in some peoples' minds fresh doubts about the integrity of Sundar
Singh.
Queen Wilhelmina who ruled over Holland for many years was profoundly influenced by the life and teaching of Sundar
Singh.
She sent me a copy of her book Lonely But Not Alone (1960).
On the first page she had written with her own hand in bold, clear letters: "With Christian greetings from a member of Christ Universal Church, the author.'
This book occupies an honoured place in my library.
She has written in it at length about Sundar Singh.
I should like to give here a brief extract:
I bought everything written by him and about him.
I read and reread these writings for years.
They included a biography by Mrs Parker, who emphasized that to us westerners obsessed by the materialistic spirit of the times,
Sundar represented the supremacy of the spiritual.
I was also struck by Sundar's idea that the Spirit of God awakes (within the limitation of our spirit—which is part of God's creation) the consciousness of His presence in man on earth.
Whenever I read Sundar it seemed to me that Christ's own life became present to me, such was his intimacy with our Saviour and the desire to share his suffering.
(p. 129).