Introduction

“The difference Christ has made.” That phrase, which I remember seeing as the title of a book or a chapter, completely describes the pages that follow this brief word of introduction. Readers of previous writings of the Sadhu will expect something simple, searching and spiritual. They will not be disappointed. Indeed, it is refreshing to meet with a book like this amid the avalanche of religious publications which in these days—though perhaps not more than in other days—is let loose on an almost bewildered public. For this is not theology in the ordinary (that is to say the slipshod) sense of the word. It is not weighted with abstruse propositions nor befogged by technical terms. Yet it is well-nigh undiluted theology in the true sense of the word. For from first to last it is concerned with an experience of God. And that has always been the basis of any theology worth the name. The doctrine of the Trinity, for instance, was not the result of the deliberations of a solemn conclave, nor of the reflections of a religious genius. It was neither discussed nor formulated in the earliest days. It was the consequence of the personal intercourse of ordinary men with Jesus their Master, and of what they heard Him say about the Father-God, and about the Spirit whom He would send. As has been said, it was not so much heard as overheard. It originated in the experience of men who gradually discovered that for them Jesus filled, and far more than filled, the picture of God.

So it is with the Sadhu. In the background of his story there are tremendous doctrines: the doctrine of the New Birth; the doctrine of the Divinity of Christ; the doctrine of Eternal Life. But he has reached them through the transparent simplicity and sincerity of his own personal experience. He is no theological professor. But he has that qualification without which theological teaching is as “sounding brass or clanging cymbal.” He “speaks that which he knows, and testifies that which he has seen.” The psychologists would doubtless be able to explain the mechanism (if the word be allowed) of his experiences. They might be dissected and catalogued, but explained away they cannot be. For even the man who cannot believe in the spiritual or the supernatural must needs admit that precisely these same experiences of a living and present Christ have been shared by a “great multitude which no man can number,” and that this, of all times, is not a favorable moment for scepticism in regard to the spiritual vision of which men are capable.

The Sadhu is under no illusions as to the inadequacy of other religions, and not least the Hinduism in which he was himself brought up, to satisfy man’s age-long quest for the Highest and the Holiest. He quotes even the most venerated representative of Indian religion at its best—Mr. Gandhi—as saying, “I have not found Him, but I am seeking after Him,” and, “It is an unbroken torture to me that I am still so far from Him.”

One could wish that this “torture” was more common in the West. Our danger, on the other hand, is that the comforts and conveniences of our twentieth-century civilisation have seemingly made God superfluous. To millions the material has proved so satisfying that the spiritual has hardly “a look-in.” Pathetic it is, and even tragic, that where the craving to discover God is so strong its satisfaction should be so inadequate; whereas in the lands where the ultimate Faith has been in possession for centuries men seem blinded to its import. Readers will note with peculiar interest and sympathy the moving words in which the Sadhu tells of his mother’s care of his upbringing, spiritual as well as bodily. “I was influenced more than the rest of the family by her pure life and teaching.” “She early impressed on me the rule that my first duty in the morning was that I should pray to God for spiritual food and blessing, and that only after that should I breakfast.” “Her bosom was for me my best theological school.” That is Indian womanhood and Hindu religion in its beauty. If English sons in Christian homes could speak like that of their mothers—thank God some of them can—we should not need to fear for the future character of our nation.

The supreme passage in the book is the Sadhu’s account of his own conversion. Here we tread on holy ground. His vision of Christ was as direct, as pertinent, as timely as St. Paul’s, and it is no wonder that after such an experience he should have felt constrained to give himself wholly to the “preaching of the Word.” Yet even that experience is not unique. It is not different in kind, though it is in degree, from that which is available for any soul who seeks God in sincerity and truth. To such simplicity of faith we, in the complexities of our day, sorely need to return. And not the least skilful of the guides who can bring us back is the Sadhu himself through these heart-moving chapters. The old words of St. Bernard may well stand as the motto of them all:—