The Sadhu's Love for the Cross

THE great theme of all Sadhu Sundar Singh’s preaching is Christ. The cross of Christ is the central figure to which he draws all men, for there he himself found peace, and so can speak with authority of the power of that cross to save others. The most frequent words on his lips are words taken from his own experience, “ I can say with confidence that the cross will bear those who bear the cross, until that cross shall lift them into the presence of the Saviour.”

As a Muhammadan said lately to a missionary who had been relating to him the story cf the cross, “ If you present that story to India as you have to me, India. will accept it.”” Thus has the Sadhu found the heart of India, and he presents to it the one and only satisfaction for its soul hunger—Jesus and His Cross. He presents it in the New Testament way, and his life of utter self-abnegation and sacrifice enforces his teaching, while his own intense personal joy in the Saviour commends it as nothing else could. The cross implies suffering, and to be like his

Lord is the one desire of the Sadhu. He wrote in an autograph book :—

So great the joy I have in Light

That every sorrow brings delight.

A missionary in Japan asked the Sadhu whether he still wandered about India hungry and homeless as he had donc in the beginning of his Christian ministry, and was struck by the reply: ‘“No, now in India they know me, and if I go to a town they have thousands of people to hear me in a big hall. This is not the way of the Cross ; for that I must go to Tibet.”

Whilst surrounded by almost adoring crowds in Trivandram, his one grief was that things were so comfortable that he was not suffering for his Master enough. Perhaps later, when he was rushed from place to place for countless meetings in the heat of our tropical summer—a heat he had not experienced before, always having from a child spent the hot season on the hills— and having to travel by boat, bullock cart, or train at night, and to start his work again upon arrival, he may have felt differently. In speaking of it to his friends he simply said, ‘‘ It is the will of God.”

When he was plunged into the misery of an eastern prison at Tlom to find himself herded with all sorts of evil characters, he wrote in the fly-leaf of his New Testament these words :—

Nepal, June 7, 1914. ‘ Christ’s presence has turned my prison into a blessed heaven ; what then will it do in heaven hereafter? ~

So, like his predecessors Paul and Silas of old. his prison was his meeting-place with Christ, and to be in hell with Christ would be better to him than to be in heaven without Him.

So sure is the Sadhu of Christ’s continual presence with him that he expressed no surprise when the following event took place in his life. When travelling through a wild part of Tibet and unable to enter the village because of the hostility of the people the Sadhu took refuge in a cave. He had not been there long when he saw a number of the village people approaching him with sticks and stones, and feeling that his end was near he commended his soul to God in prayer. Within a few yards of him the men suddenly stood still, and falling back some paces they began to whisper together. Then again they came forward and said to the Sadhu, ‘“‘ Who is the other man with you in bright garments, and many more who surround you?” He replied that there was no man with him, but with awe the men insisted that they saw a host of bright ones standing all round the cave. Then the men besought the Sadhu to accompany them to their homes, and going with them he spoke of Christ so that they feared and believed his words. He then knew that God had sent His angels to protect him in danger and to open the way for him to preach to these men.

A few years ago the Sadhu wrote :—

I thank God that He has chosen unworthy me in the days of my youth that I may spend the days of my strength in His service. Even befcuce baptism my prayer to God was that He should show me His ways, and so He, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, did show Himself to me, and called me to serve Him as a sadhu and to preach His holy Name. Now although I. have suffered hunger, thirst, cold, heat, imprisonment, maledictions, infirmities, persecutions, and innumerable evils, yet I thank and bless His holy Name that through His grace my heart is ever full of joy. From my ten years’ experience I can unhesitatingly say that the Cross bears those who bear the Cross.

To-day the Sadhu bears the same testimony to the writer, adding that. he hopes God will spare him yet for some years, that the fulness of manhood’s strength may all be given to Him in the precious work of preaching, or in suffering, wheresoever his Lord may send him.