Called to Preach

Very weary after his long and hard journey through the Punjab, Kashmir, Baluchistan and Afghanistan, the Sadhu retraced his steps and came to Kotgarh, a small place beyond Simla in the Himalayas, where he remained a time for rest. This little place will always be associated with Sundar Singh, for early in his career he laboured there, and it is to. Kotgarh still that he retires for a brief rest between his tours, or before starting on his arduous journeys into the closed lands of Tibet and Nepal.

During the summer of 1906, Sundar met Mr. Stokes, who was staying near Ketgarh. This wealthy American gentleman had come to India to Jabour for her people, and for the glory of God. Meeting the Sadhn fired his heart, and filled him with a desire to join him in his arduous life. After prayer and thought Mr. Stokes took this step, and the two Sadhus took a journey together through the Khangra valley. °

Food and shelter were difficult to obtain, and the two brothers suffered’ much, but their work was good and their fellowship sweet. It was during this journey that Sundar Singh fell ill. The two Sadhus had travelled together for some hundreds of miles, sharing the same hardships, often being obliged to seck shelter in the common filthy scrais, and often subsisting on the barest and roughest diet, and little enough of that. They were passing through very unhealthy country when Sundar was scized with fever and severe internal pains. Shaking with ague, burning with fever and always in pain, he dragged on until at last he could walk no longer. He sank on the path almost unconscious, and Mr. Stokes moved him into an easier position, enquiring at the same time as to how he was. No complaint ever passes the lips of the Sadhu whatever his lot. and Mr. Stokes, was not at all surprised to receive the reply he did. With a smile, though in a feeble voice, the Sadhu answered, “ Tam very happy. How swect it is to suffer for His sake.” Those who know the Sadhu best know that ‘this is the key-note of his life.”

It was a wild and jungly place where this happened, and Mr. Stokes was in great difficulty, but he suceeeded in getting the sick man to the house of a European some miles away, where he was nursed to health again. The kind host was at that time without any care for religion, but day by day he saw the example of the Sadhu and heard such things from his lips as caused him to think deeply, until he became a truly converted man. Thus was this illness blessed to the saving of one soul who found joy and peace in Christ Jesus.

Mr. Stokes possessed a magic lantern which the Sadhu borrowed and used in Rampur and other places for strect preaching at night, when large numbers of people gathered to see the pictures and hear the explanation. Thus unweariedly, night and day, the two Sadhus passed from place to place, doing most of their travelling by night, because the sun was too fieree for Mr. Stokes to bear its rays on his unprotected head. It was at this time that Mr. Stokes spoke so appreciatively of the work of the Sadhu, who, though not much more than a boy, was so filled with his message that wherever he went people were under a strange compulsion to listen to what he said.

In 1907 the two Sadhus laboured in the Leper Asylum at Sabathu, and later in the year they went down to Lahore to work amongst the plague-stricken in the Plague Camp there. They toiled unremittingly day and night, allowing themselves only brief hours of respite, and even these were spent lying on the ground amongst the sick and dying.

The next year Mr. Stokes ‘went to America on furlough and Sundar was once more left alone. From Lahore he went on to Sindh, returning through Rajputana to North India again, and then as the hot weather drew on he made his first journey into the closed land of Tibet. In all these places the Gospel was preached incessantly, and no man who came across the Sadhu went away without hearing that Jesus had come. into the world to save sinners.

After his return from ‘Tibet he had a great desire to go to Palestine, in the belief that to see the place where his Saviour had lived and died would inspire him to fuller and better service. But when he reached Bombay he found it impracticable, so in 1909 he returned to North India through the Central Provinees, preaching as he went.

SADHU SUNDAR SINGH READING HIS NEW TESTAMENT