Search this book
Foreword to the 1926 edition, signed “H. B. Lahore” — that is, the Bishop of Lahore.
I feel it a very great privilege to be allowed to accede to the request of my friend, Sadhu Sundar Singh, that I would write a brief foreword to his book "Visions", because I hope and believe that the little book will help many souls in their struggle to find Reality. I wish that all who read the book could have the privilege, that we in this Diocese and a number of people in London also have, of knowing the Sadhu personally. The message of the book gets an added force from the impression of a sweet sanity and simplicity that is left in one's mind after a talk with the Sadhu.
Inevitably, I think, some who read the book will feel impelled to ask the question: "What is the exact nature of these spiritual experiences? What, for instance, was the part played in them by the sub-conscious mind? Had what was seen in the Visions an objective reality?"
I have not the philosophical knowledge that would enable me to give an answer to these questions: and I am by no means sure that, if I had it, I should feel that there would be any profit in using it in this case. S. Paul was content to leave his deepest spiritual experiences without full explanation. "Whether in the body or out of the body I cannot tell: God knoweth." The simplest view to my mind seems the truest. I read the book in manuscript one Sunday afternoon in Simla this summer, and as I tried afterwards to analyse my impression, I felt it was this. I felt that for me the veil, which normally shrouds the real world, had been for a few moments lifted and that I had been allowed, through the help of Christ's faithful servant, to see things as they really are. I do not know, but I am inclined to think that my friend the Sadhu would himself prefer that the "visions" should be "explained" in this completely simple way. As I let my mind dwell on what I had read in the little book, a passage of Scripture came up over the margin of consciousness into my conscious mind, as recounting what was in some sense a parallel experience.
In all the conflicting opinions about the coming of the Kingdom of God, we have our Blessed Lord's own authority for its having come in one particular way. "There be some here that shall not taste of death till they have seen the Kingdom of God come with power." In both S. Mark's and S. Matthew's Gospels these words are so closely linked on to the story of the Transfiguration that I cannot doubt that they interpreted this memorable event in the life of the three chosen Disciples (one of whom was, as it were, the sponsor of S. Mark's Gospel) as a coming of the Kingdom with power. It consisted in the lifting of the veil which shrouds the unseen world, so that the denizens of that world were visible and audible to human eyes and ears, and in the glory of the real Jesus shining through the veil of flesh.
May it not be that this kind of experience is still given sometimes to God's servants? I personally believe that the Sadhu's experiences recounted in these "Visions" were something of this kind: that for him, as for these other servants of God, the veil which shrouds the real was lifted, so that he saw our Lord as He really is, and that world.
Messages that come as the result of such experiences must be reverenced, but they must also be tested by reference to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. I have tried my best to apply this "test" to these messages, and I find them in accord with that supreme revelation of God's character which we have in our Lord's life and teaching. I therefore gratefully accept them as one more proof that God is still speaking to His people, and I pray that this little book may open the eyes of many to "the real world" that is all round us, to which we are too often blind, for "closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet".
H. B. LAHORE.
Simla, 6th August 1926.