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At the Master's Feet
1922 · 70 pages
At the Master's Feet
by Sadhu Sundar Singh
The best-known devotional of Sadhu Sundar Singh, written as a dialogue between "the Disciple" and "the Master." Translated from his Urdu, it gathers the meditations of the saffron-robed wanderer who carried the Christian message across India, Nepal, and Tibet in an Indian idiom.
The changed life
Born into a Sikh family in the Punjab — and so hostile that he once burned a Gospel — he was converted after a vision and baptized in 1905, becoming a wandering Christian sadhu who preached for some twenty-five years until he vanished heading into Tibet.
Sadhu Sundar Singh, in his own words
The popular biographies of Sadhu Sundar Singh retell a life he first expressed himself. At the Master's Feet is his own devotional work, written out of the prayer and wandering that defined him after his dramatic conversion from Sikhism.
Read the sadhu in his own words, in a clean modern edition with the original linked free.
Summary
At the Master's Feet is a short devotional work by Sadhu Sundar Singh, the Indian Christian holy man. It is written as a dialogue between the "Disciple" and the "Master" — that is, between Sundar Singh and Christ — in which the Master answers questions on practical themes of the spiritual life: sin and salvation, prayer, service, the cross, and the presence of God.
The book grew out of Sundar Singh's own contemplative experience and his life as a wandering sadhu. Originally written in Urdu and translated into English by Arthur and Mrs. Parker in 1922 with the author's own cooperation, it reads less like a treatise and more like recorded meditation, using vivid parables and everyday images drawn from Indian life to express its teaching.
Rather than building a system, the dialogues circle around a single conviction: that real knowledge of God comes through personal communion and surrender, sitting (as the title says) at the Master's feet. It is one of the works that carried Sundar Singh's voice — an Indian Christian voice shaped by his own culture — to readers in the West.
Who was Sadhu Sundar Singh?
Sundar Singh was born in 1889 into a devout Sikh family in the Punjab. As a young man he was deeply religious but restless, searching for peace in the Sikh and Hindu scriptures and in other texts without finding it; for a time he was hostile to Christianity, reportedly even burning a Bible. His turning point came at about fifteen, when, in despair, he prayed for God to reveal himself or he would end his life.
He described receiving a vision of Christ in his room that night, which convinced him and changed the course of his life. He converted, was rejected by his family — his account includes being disowned and an attempt on his life — and chose to live as a sadhu, an Indian ascetic holy man, but now as a follower of Christ. For roughly the next quarter century he traveled and preached in that distinctive form until his disappearance in the Himalayas. At the Master's Feet comes out of that life of prayer and wandering.
Common questions
- How did Sundar Singh convert from Sikhism to Christianity?
- By his own account, after searching the scriptures of several faiths without peace, he prayed in desperation as a teenager and experienced a vision of Christ. That experience convinced him, and he became a Christian despite being disowned by his family.
- What is At the Master's Feet about?
- It is a short devotional written as a dialogue between the Disciple (Sundar Singh) and the Master (Christ), covering practical spiritual topics such as prayer, sin, salvation, and service, expressed through Indian parables and imagery.
- Did Sundar Singh write a book?
- Yes. “At the Master's Feet” is Sadhu Sundar Singh's own devotional work, written as a dialogue between the Disciple and the Master — his own words, not a later biography.
Preach this story
Sadhu Sundar Singh's story is featured in our free sermon illustrations on:
Study guide
Grades 8–12Themes
- Conversion from another faith
- Vision and devotion
- Indian Christianity (the sadhu)
- Discipleship and prayer
Discussion questions
- What led Sundar Singh from hostility toward Christianity to faith in Christ?
- How does the dialogue form — Disciple and Master — shape the book?
- What does it mean that Sundar Singh lived as a Christian sadhu?
- How does he use Indian images and parables to teach spiritual truth?
Key terms
- Sadhu.
- A wandering Hindu/Indian holy man; Sundar Singh lived as a Christian one.
- Sikhism.
- The faith of Sundar Singh's family before his conversion.
- Discipleship.
- Following and learning from Christ — the book's subject.
A note on the text. At the Master's Feet is in the public domain. The text below is free to read at the source we link. The original text is also available free here.
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