SOME years ago now a man came into my study and brought me a letter of introduction from a brother missionary two hundred miles away. I had never seen the man before, but I was at once struck with his appearance. He was a thin, gaunt-looking man, one who evidently had in him a large capacity of mysticism and devotion. I asked him to sit down and to tell me his history, and he said that it was this.
He had gone about two years before to the place where this brother missionary lived. Up to that time he had never seen a Bible; up to that time he had never seen a missionary; and when he got there and heard that there was a missionary he made his acquaintance as speedily as he could. He began to read. He read the Bible in Sanskrit, for he was a great Sanskrit scholar, and the teaching which he had had from his own books began somehow or other to find a new explanation and a strange fulfilment in the Book which was now placed in his hands. He became an enthusiastic student of it, and when he had studied it for about six months he proposed on his own account to become an expounder of the Book. He was not a Christian. He did not profess to be a Christian, and he had no desire to be baptized; but he said that the Bible was a wonderful Veda, and he took it about with him wherever he went, and read it to the people with whom he mingled.
Now this man came to me, and for a long time he was doing work of this kind. He would start out without giving me any warning, and be away sometimes for two months, sometimes for three months, and then suddenly reappear again.
“Well, where have you been to?” I would say to him. “Oh, I have been all through South India on this journey, and I have stopped at about a dozen different places.” “Well, what have you done?” I said. “I did this in one place. As soon as I got there I asked for the chief pundit of the place, and was introduced to him. He came, and we spoke in Sanskrit together, and he seemed pleased with me. Then I asked him if he had any disciples whom he would call together so that we could talk, and he called them together―sixty of them. When they came I sat down, opened the Bible, and began to chant from the Bible as we chant from our Vedas, and the chief pundit and the disciples listened. I chanted from the Psalms, and they said, ‘What Veda is that? It is beautiful. We have never heard that Veda before. Where did you get it?’ Still,” he said, “I went on; and then when I had chanted some of the Psa. 1 turned to the Gospels, and I began to chant some of the stories from the life of Christ, and they listened again and wondered again, and at last they said, ‘We must have that Veda’; and I have brought home sixty rupees from the people in that place in order that I may send them at once sixty Sanskrit Bibles.”
But he did more than that. He came home one time with some very surprising news. He said, “I have this time been to the chief Guru.” There is a certain Guru of great influence. He is one of the most powerful ecclesiastical potentates in the whole of India. This man had gone to him. He had nothing on but just one cloth thrown around him, and when he came up to the place where this Guru lives he asked to be introduced to him. “Why do you want to see his holiness?” they said. “Oh, I want to speak to him. I am a Sanskrit scholar, and I hear that his holiness is the greatest Sanskrit scholar living, and I should like to converse with him and sit at his feet and hear his learning.” And so he was introduced. He prostrated himself and talked in Sanskrit with the Guru for a while. At last he said, “Your holiness, I have a book― a Veda. I do not know whether you have seen it, but if you will permit me I will chant a few slokas from it.” He was granted permission, and so the man began to chant a portion of the Sermon on the Mount, and the Guru listened to it. He had never heard that before. He knew all the Advaita philosophy from end to end. He had read, the Rig Veda over and over again, but he had never read the Sermon on the Mount. He listened as one would listen to new and ravishing music, and when the man had done he said, “Sing some more for me.” Then amongst other things this man chanted in Sanskrit, “You must be born again.” And he came again and again to that refrain, and at last the Guru said, “Can you get me a copy of this Veda? I should like to have it, and read it for myself.” The man said, “I will get you one if you like.” “And then,” he added, “I left him, and I have come back to get a special copy for him.”
Is not the Bible doing the work that you desire? Is there anything better than this that you could wish? I will tell you one other instance, and then my time will be fully gone. There was a man living away across country, miles from any missionary. One day the missionary went there, and he found one who was instructed in the gospels. The man had never seen a missionary; he had never seen a native teacher; but he had read the Book carefully, read it repeatedly, and had adopted as his the Guru whom it portrayed. And what was the consequence? That man, having seen how good the Guru was, had said to himself, “I must obey this Guru. What are his commands?” Turning to the Gospel once more, he found the command that he should be baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. What was he to do? He had never seen a Christian church―he had never seen the ordinance of baptism administered; but he had a way of obeying the command which was quite his own. Day by day he went down to the tank, and, looking up towards heaven, he said, “I baptize myself in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” and at each name he plunged into the water and came out again. Who shall say that that man was not baptized from heaven? Nay, more than that: he saw another command, which was that he was to eat and drink to the memory of Christ’s death till He came; and so, although he had never been in a church, as I say, day by day he took a handful of rice, and, putting it into his mouth, said, “This I do in remembrance of Christ,” and, drinking a little water, he said, “I drink this because Christ died for me.” That man, though no priest had ever put his hands on his head, and though no minister of the Gospel anywhere had ever given the Sacrament to him, had truly received the Supper of the Lord!
(From the Bible Society Monthly Reporter)