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The incident in Madrasah proved to he a happy one, for it was a stepping-stone to lead me into a wider circle of Christian fellowship, and opened the door for me to be known as a follower of Christ. Every Muslim from that day looked upon me and treated me as a renegade from Islam and regarded me as a Christian. After my expulsion from the Calcutta Madrasah, I managed to secure my admission in C. M. S. (now St. Paul's) High School, Calcutta, through the kindness of the Rev. S. D. Hinde, then the Principal of the School, for no non-Christian boy was then allowed to be taken as a student into it. In this new School for the first time I had the joy of being in close fellowship with sons of the Christian community. It was a real comradeship that I was privileged to enjoy. The School had several Christian activities entirely conducted by the students themselves, which were organised under an association of the Christian students known as St. Paul's Brotherhood. Every Sunday evening after the Church service one band of the senior students used to go for preaching in the streets of Calcutta, and another to visit the patients in the Medical College, and to render such help to the patients as they could, for example writing letters for those unable to write, or making purchases for those
who had no friends to buy things for them. At the same time, no opportunity for doing personal evangelism was ever neglected. I have always carried a delightful picture of those Sunday evenings, when with the bands of those students I have gone to preach, either in the streets, sometimes chiefly at the corner of the Harrison Road, near the Sealdah Station, where a large audience of the moving crowd used to gather round the young preachers to listen to the preaching of the Gospel, or at other times, in College Square right opposite to the Senate Hall of the Calcutta University, where a selected and literate class of Bengali gentlemen would form an audience. No less happy is the memory of my visits with my fellow students paid in the general ward of the Medical College Hospital, Calcutta, where the young lads used to go from bed to bed speaking cheerfully to the patients, and always trying to find an opening to present the Great Physician of soul and body to those sufferers. It was marvellous to see how the Holy Spirit guided their thoughts in public preaching and also in personal evangelism. On one occasion when a student speaking to a patient had spoken of the possibility of his dying in his sin, and thus going to hell for eternity, and perhaps that very illness might prove his last chance to repent and accept Jesus as his Saviour, he was sharply criticised by others of the team for speaking to a sick person in that strain, devoid of hope and joy. It was a great lesson that I learnt from my fellow Christian students. In later life how often have I had an occasion of listening to such preachers who emphasise the dark side of human life and fail to present Him who is the source of JOY and HAPPINESS, and who even standing at the grave could proclaim Himself to be the Resurrection and the Life, and who, surrounded by outcastes and sinners earned for Himself
the title of a friend of publicans and sinners (Matt. 11:18).
Table of contents to How a Sufi Found His Lord
