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At the Master’s Feet
1922 · 69 pages
At the Master’s Feet
by Sadhu Sundar Singh
Why our edition. The free text is a proofread transcription from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library rather than a page scan, so there is no scanning damage to report. What ours adds is the typesetting: one clean file, in three formats, without the boilerplate. The full text is public domain and free — linked below.
On this page: a summary of At the Master’s Feet, which translation this edition uses, and our clean edition as a PDF or EPUB.
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.
Why Sadhu Sundar Singh became a Christian
Raised a Sikh, he tore up a Bible in front of his father and burned it. Three days later, in December 1904, he rose before dawn and prayed for God to show himself, meaning to lie down on the railway line before the 5 o’clock train if nothing happened. At 4:30 he saw a great light in the room, and in it Jesus.
“Three days after I had burnt the Bible, I woke up about three o’clock in the morning, had my usual bath, and prayed, ‘O God, if there is a God, wilt thou show me the right way or I will kill myself.’”
What it cost
His family and his home. Born a Sikh, he was disowned and driven out as a teenager, and spent his first night as a Christian under a tree.
his own words, in Streeter and Appasamy, The Sadhu (1921)
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.
Is there an audiobook of At the Master’s Feet?
Yes. The complete audiobook of At the Master’s Feet by Sadhu Sundar Singh runs 2 hours 3 minutes, with chapter markers, and is $8.99. It is an unabridged reading of the same edition sold here, delivered as an M4B you download and keep — there is no subscription and no app.
The narration is synthetic: it is read by a text-to-speech voice, not by a human narrator. We say so here, on the buy button and on the receipt, because it is the kind of thing a listener should know before paying rather than after.
Which translation of At the Master’s Feet is this?
Our edition presents the public-domain Parker translation in a clean, readable modern format with clear type, and we link to a free source so you can read the text online as well.
At the Master's Feet is the best-known devotional of Sadhu Sundar Singh (1889–1929), the Sikh convert who burned a Gospel as a boy, was converted after a vision at fifteen, and spent the rest of his life as a wandering Christian sadhu in the saffron robe. He set the book down in Urdu, and it appeared there first; this is the English of the Rev.
Arthur and Mrs. Rebecca Parker, published in 1922 and prepared, as their note says, with the Sadhu's own co-operation. Sundar Singh disappeared on the road to Tibet in 1929.
The book is a dialogue. The Disciple asks and the Master answers, and the Master's replies carry the substance — six subjects across the whole: the presence of God, sin and salvation, prayer, service, the cross, and heaven and hell.
A note on what we changed, which is very little. The Parkers' text reached us clean — we measured two questionable words in eighteen thousand, and both turned out to be ordinary English. So nothing has been repaired, because there was nothing to repair.
What we did change is the shape of the page. The transcription runs to paragraphs of a hundred and sixteen words at the median, which is heavy going on a screen, and we have broken the longest at sentences the translators had already ended. Not one word is added, removed or reordered: the sequence is identical, character for character.
What we did NOT change is the language, and that was deliberate. The Disciple addresses God as Thou, and the Master answers in the cadence of the Bible he is quoting — a hundred and four Scripture references run through these pages. Every archaic form in the book is one or the other: reverential address, or quoted Scripture. Modernising them would not make the book plainer, it would make it a different book, so the thees and thous stand exactly as the Parkers set them.
The free source is linked on this book's page.
Common questions
- How did Sundar Singh convert from Sikhism to Christianity?
- By his own account: raised a Sikh, he burned a Bible in front of his father, and three days later, in December 1904, he prayed through the early morning for God to show himself, resolved to kill himself if nothing happened. He saw a light, and in it Jesus. His family drove him out, and he was baptized at Simla in September 1905.
- 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. What you’re buying is our edition: the careful typesetting and correction. The original text is also available free here.
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From the same generation
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Toyohiko Kagawa · 1920
Published in 1920, within a generation of this one.
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