The Message of Sadhu Sundar Singh - A Study in Mysticism on Practical Religion #267557

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.<br><br>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.<br><br>Sadhu Sundar Singh - "the Sadhu" as he is popularly called - lives in this twentieth century a life which, so far as external conditions are concerned, resembles that of St. Francis of Assisi. His inward experience recalls rather, in some ways, St. Paul, in others Mother Juliana, while in others it is individual to himself. If, however, we venture thus to speak of him and them together, it is not by way of asserting a comparison of greatness; it is merely to indicate an identity of type. Whether Sundar Singh is a great man in the sense in which History employs that term, History alone can decide. In that sense no man can be pronounced great till his career is ended, nor even then by his own contemporaries. But while we do not suggest that the Sadhu is on the same plane with St. Francis or St. Paul, we feel that, from having known him, we understand them better.<br><br>The Sadhu is no metaphysician, no scientist, no higher critic.