The Sadhu

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Table of Contents

As printed in the original 1921 Macmillan (London) edition, with the page on which each part begins.

Editions of this book

Streeter and Appasamy's study was published simultaneously under two titles. This page follows the original UK edition — The Sadhu: A Study in Mysticism and Practical Religion, Macmillan and Co., Limited, London, 1921, xv + 264 pages (Internet Archive: sadhustudyinmyst00streiala) — which is the specific source this Web Book presents. The Internet Archive's own catalog record for that edition notes: "American edition appeared under title: The message of Sadhu Sundar Singh." UECF.NET separately maintains a page for that US edition (The Macmillan Company, New York, 234 pages, Internet Archive bwb_C0-ANO-604): The Message of Sadhu Sundar Singh — reader's guide. The two scans differ slightly in pagination and, in at least one place, chapter naming — this UK edition's own contents page lists Chapter IX as "Table Talk," where the US edition's contents page lists the corresponding chapter as "Daily Life." Readers who want to compare the two printings word for word should consult both Internet Archive scans directly.

A Reader's Guide to the Book

The original book is a continuous theological and biographical study rather than a set of independent essays, so the descriptions below say — in UECF.NET's own words — what each chapter is about, to help a reader go straight to the right place in the original scan. Text set off in quotation marks below is quoted directly from the book, verified against the Internet Archive scan and given with its page reference; everything else is UECF.NET's own description of a chapter's subject, not a quotation from it.

Introduction — p. vii

"BETWEEN the Mystics of any past age and ourselves there is, quite apart from the problem of the mystic consciousness itself, a barrier of time and circumstance which no effort of the historic imagination can completely penetrate. In this book we attempt a study of a Mystic, with the unique advantage that he is a contemporary of our own. He is also one of those Mystics who appeals to the present age because it is precisely his consciousness of communion with the Divine that impels him to a life of unselfish activity and the practical service of mankind." (p. vii, opening lines)

The Introduction sets out the authors' purpose: to study, while he is still living, a mystic whose visions and teaching had already made him widely known — and to do so as a matter of contemporary record rather than as history reconstructed at a distance of centuries. In the American edition of the same joint study, the corresponding introduction is signed by Streeter from Queen's College, Oxford, and dated 1 February 1921; readers wanting to confirm the signature and date on this specific London printing should consult page vii–xv of the scan itself.

Chapter I — The Man and His Making — p. 1

"THE career of Sundar Singh, up to his return to India from the West in September 1920, falls into four periods clearly defined." (p. 1, opening line)

A biographical account of Sundar Singh's life up to that 1920 return from his preaching tour of the West: his upbringing in a well-to-do Sikh family in the Punjab, his conversion to Christianity following what he described as a vision of Christ, his taking the robe of an itinerant Hindu-style "sadhu," and his growth into the widely travelled preacher he had become by 1920 — organised, as the opening line states, around four clearly defined periods of his career.

Chapter II — A Mystic's Creed — p. 49

An account of how Sundar Singh's Christ-centred mysticism related to central Christian doctrines — the Trinity, the Incarnation and the Atonement among them — doctrines which, by the authors' account elsewhere in the book, he characteristically explained not through formal argument but through parables and illustrations drawn from everyday Indian life.

Chapter III — A Mystic's Peace — p. 69

A discussion of the settled inward peace the authors describe in Sundar Singh's own testimony — a peace attributed to the conscious presence of Christ, and reported as holding constant through hardship and opposition rather than depending on outward circumstances.

Chapter IV — A Mystic's Way — p. 84

An examination of how contemplative prayer and active evangelistic service fit together in Sundar Singh's daily life — his own account of a life given to prayer issuing, in his case, in continual travel and preaching rather than withdrawal from the world.

Chapter V — Ecstasy and Vision — p. 109

The chapter opens with the authors' own analytical outline of its contents, beginning: "Esoteric Character — Visions of the Jewish Seers —" and continuing through further headings printed under the chapter title on p. 109. (Quoted from the book's own chapter-opening outline; the full outline continues beyond what is reproduced here — see the source scan.)

The longest chapter in the book (pp. 109–156), it is the authors' careful treatment of Sundar Singh's reported visions and ecstatic experiences — discussed, as its heading indicates, alongside precedents such as the visions of the Jewish seers, rather than dismissed outright, and considered in relation to the person of Christ.

Chapter VI — Suffering, Sin and Judgement — p. 157

Sundar Singh's understanding of suffering, sin and divine judgement, considered against the background of the Indian concept of karma that had shaped his upbringing, and reinterpreted by him, on the authors' account, through repentance and the Christian doctrine of God's judgement and mercy.

Chapter VII — The Heart and the Head — p. 179

A discussion, as its title indicates, of the relationship between devotion ("the heart") and intellectual argument ("the head") in Sundar Singh's understanding of how a person comes to know Christ, and the authors' own assessment of that emphasis.

Chapter VIII — Nature and the Bible — p. 191

Sundar Singh's sense of the natural world as itself a form of revelation of God standing alongside Scripture, together with the authors' discussion of his view of miracles.

Chapter IX — Table Talk — p. 212

As its title suggests — in the tradition of published "table talk" collections such as Luther's — this chapter appears to gather informal sayings and recorded conversational exchanges attributed to Sundar Singh, rather than continuous argument. Readers should treat this description as an inference from the chapter's title and position in the book, not a verified summary of its content; consult pp. 212–224 of the source scan directly for the actual text.

Chapter X — An Indian Christianity — p. 225

The chapter opens under the sub-heading "Christianity and National Genius": "IT is a commonplace of history that religions, like all living things, must adapt themselves to their environment if they are to flourish." (p. 225, opening line)

The closing chapter, in which the authors set out Sundar Singh's hope for a Christianity that could take root in India in a genuinely Indian form, opening from the premise — stated in its first line — that a living religion must adapt to the national genius of the people who receive it.

Table of Parables and Analogies — p. 257

An index the authors themselves compiled of the parables and illustrative analogies Sundar Singh used throughout his teaching, as printed and cross-referenced by page number in the original edition. The complete list can be read in the scanned original at Internet Archive, linked above and below.

Index — p. 259

The book closes with a general index to names and subjects, which can likewise be read in the scanned original.

About Sadhu Sundar Singh

Sadhu Sundar Singh (born 1889, Rampur, Punjab — last seen 1929) was an Indian Christian evangelist and ascetic, raised in a devout Sikh household, who after a conversion experience as a teenager was baptized into the Christian church. He adopted the saffron robe of a Hindu-style "sadhu" (holy man) as a sign that following Christ did not require abandoning his Indian identity, and spent the rest of his life as a barefoot, itinerant preacher across India, Tibet and other parts of Asia, later touring Britain, Europe, North America and Australia — including the 1920 visit to Oxford during which he met B. H. Streeter. He set out on what became his final journey into Tibet in 1929 and was never confirmed to have arrived; he is presumed to have died on that journey. He remains one of the most widely studied Indian Christian figures of the early twentieth century.

This paragraph draws on standard, widely available biographical reference sources on Sundar Singh in addition to this book, and is UECF.NET editorial background rather than a quotation from either. UECF.NET has not independently verified every detail and welcomes corrections at info@uecf.net.

About the authors

Burnett Hillman Streeter (1874–1937) was an English New Testament scholar and Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford, best known for his work on the Synoptic Gospels (notably The Four Gospels: A Study of Origins, 1924). He met Sundar Singh during the latter's visit to Oxford in 1920 and undertook this joint study soon afterward.

Aiyadurai Jesudasen Appasamy (1891–1975) was an Indian Christian theologian who later became a Bishop of the Church of South India. He was personally acquainted with Sundar Singh and drew on his own conversations with him for this book; Appasamy went on to write extensively in his own right on Indian Christian mysticism and on expressing the Christian faith through indigenous Indian rather than Western categories of thought — the same conviction this book attributes to Sundar Singh himself.

These summaries draw on standard bibliographic and biographical reference sources for both authors, in addition to this book, and are UECF.NET editorial background. Corrections welcome at info@uecf.net.

Scripture in this book

Sundar Singh's teaching, as reported by the authors, draws on Scripture throughout. Where a Bible reference appears in the original text, readers can look it up using the NKJV Bible on UECF.NET. UECF.NET has not tagged individual verse citations on this reading-guide page, since doing so accurately requires reading the full running text at the source; the original scan's own page images and footnotes are the authoritative place to check any specific citation.

Source & Rights

Source: Internet Archive, item The Sadhu: A Study in Mysticism and Practical Religion, by B. H. Streeter and A. J. Appasamy (identifier sadhustudyinmyst00streiala, scanned from a University of California Libraries copy, call number SRLF:LAGE-141543). Every bibliographic fact on this page — title, subtitle, authors, publisher, place, year, page count, table of contents and page numbers — comes from that scan's own contents page and catalog metadata, cross-checked directly against the item's OCR text.

Rights: first published in 1921, this book is in the public domain in the United States (a fact independently supported both by its publication date, more than 95 years before the current year, and by the Internet Archive's own cataloged rights field for this item, NOT_IN_COPYRIGHT). UECF.NET presents this page as a bibliographic and reading guide — with a chapter-by-chapter description in its own words and a small number of short, clearly marked quotations, each individually verified against the source scan — rather than a full re-typeset copy of the book's running text, so that every reader is pointed to the authoritative scanned original, with its exact pagination and wording intact, for the complete text. Use the Read the full book online, Download the source PDF and Download EPUB links above to read every word exactly as printed.

UECF.NET Web Book edition (this page) is an original reading guide compiled in 2026; it is not the original publisher's edition, and UECF.NET is not the original publisher of The Sadhu. The source edition is the 1921 Macmillan (London) printing digitized by the Internet Archive, linked throughout this page.

Corrections: if you find an error of fact on this page, please write to info@uecf.net.

Related Christian Books

Publication details

• Title: The Sadhu: A Study in Mysticism and Practical Religion
• Authors: Burnett Hillman Streeter and A. J. Appasamy
• Subject: Sadhu Sundar Singh
• First published: 1921, Macmillan and Co., Limited (London)
• Language: English
• Pages: xv, 264
• UECF.NET classification: English Christian Book · Christian Mysticism · Biography · Indian Christianity
• Source record: Internet Archive — sadhustudyinmyst00streiala

Latest updates

• 2026 — Published as a UECF.NET reader's guide: verified bibliographic details, a full chapter-by-chapter table of contents, several individually-verified short quotations, and links to the complete public-domain scan. No large-scale copy of the book's running text is reproduced on this page.

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