The sharing and fellowship of true love. The kingdom of Antichrist and the kingdom of Christ are within us. The inward is the original of the outward.

The Second Letter.

The sharing and fellowship of true love. The kingdom of Antichrist and the kingdom of Christ are within us. The inward is the original of the outward.

Beloved brother!

It was a real gladness to me to be assured, from your letter, of your remembrance — which I recognize, for various reasons, to be so very needful; and gladness too that, for my part, I still stand with you, and with you all (God be praised!), in the fellowship of the Spirit, and hope to remain so forever; and that in that same fellowship I heartily wish for you the very thing I recognize to be needful for myself. It seems to me at times that I would gladly share the little piece of bread the Father hands me, inwardly or outwardly, with every one of His children; and I take my part, too, in all the good — all the grace, the virtues, and prayers — that they all possess and perform, in heaven and on earth. I wish, without begrudging it to them, that these were mine, so that I might glorify God in them and please Him. To all the good they have and practice, I say a hearty Yes and Amen. It pleases me; I rejoice in it and praise the Lord for it. And so I do — or desire to do — especially in regard to our firstborn Brother, Jesus Christ. See, dear brother: this is how it comes that I sometimes think myself to be something, when I am nothing — as a poor man might rejoice over his neighbors' wealth; nonetheless, it seems to me, this exercise pleases the Lord, and is not unblessed to me either.

But I am wandering onto quite another subject than the one your little letter touches on. So it is quite right, dear brother, that we — as you say — may find within ourselves everything that others still read as an outward Babylon, and as the whore and the beast, and so on. It strikes us as foolish when we read how hardly Christ's disciples could let go of their weak, even mistaken, notions of Christ's kingdom; yet today's disciples mostly do just the same. How many grieving travelers to Emmaus might one not find — who have talked, written, heard, and hoped so much that the Savior would set up the kingdom for Israel in these last days, and have perhaps cried "Hosanna" in advance — and now walk about sad and disheartened, because they have found suffering instead of joys! Yet only let your heart, and ours, remain upright before the Lord, and He meets us, unrecognized, on this mourning-walk, and lays out for us the nature of His kingdom, and the ways to its raising-up within us, in another tone: Was it not necessary that Christ should suffer these things, and so enter into His glory? — and so on. Just as we often seek Christ's kingdom far too much outside ourselves — though the soul itself hardly knows it — so we do the same with the devil's kingdom, with Babylon, with the whore and the false prophet. For although, as is sadly known, this latter is also outside us, in others — just as the former too is, in its time, to be looked for outside us — yet the master of a thousand wiles [the devil] has his aim in it: namely, to hold the mind outside itself, and so away from God as well; whereby one stays blinder than one would think to the thorough knowledge of God and of oneself. Whole worlds are to be found within us; in our ground lie the mystery of iniquity and the mystery of godliness, the depths of Satan and the depths of the Godhead, to be discovered through the Spirit. Whatever, of either side, appears in the outer world and before the senses is only a growth or branch from this tree — an image, imprint, or copy of the inner original. Everything outside us is, and must be, a mirror to us of what is to be found within. Hence it comes that enlightened souls press so hard for stillness and inward recollection, and so on. And — nota bene — hence too it comes that they interpret and understand everything in Nature and in Scripture so inwardly, or, as people say, mystically; which reason, having only a pictorial sight, cannot bear. Reason looks at the image in the mirror: it is shaped so-and-so, it has these and those spots, and so on. Now if an enlightened eye tells her that this image has its bearing on another body — that is, on herself — that she should only begin to recognize and clear away the spots in and on herself, and then that image will of itself grow clean again: this foolish woman — Reason — takes offense at it, as at a strange and dark teaching.

May the Lord lead us rightly to ourselves, and open the eyes of our mind to know ourselves rightly — from which the true knowledge of God and of all godliness will surely flow of itself. We are more thoroughly corrupted than we are able to believe. Our will, desire, thoughts, understanding, and the rest are corrupted not only when they turn toward evil objects, but are corrupted in themselves even when they go toward good ones; these are the spiritual wiles in heavenly things (Ephesians 6:12). Therefore we must remain, as it were, without will and without desire, within ourselves before the Lord, so that the Lord may quicken and work in us through the pure movements of His grace. O, how unclean are all our workings and motions! Let all our earth be still before the Lord.

German

Der zweite Brief.

Theilnehmung und Gemeinschaft der wahren Liebe. Das Reich des Widerchristen und das Reich Christi sind in uns. Das Innere ist das Original des Aeußeren.

Geliebter Bruder!

Es war mir recht angenehm, da ich aus deinem Briefe deines Andenkens versichert wurde, welches ich aus verschiedenen Ursachen so höchst nöthig zu seyn erkenne; wie auch, daß ich meines Theils noch mit dir, und mit euch allen, GOtt Lob! in Gemeinschaft des Geistes stehe und ewig zu verbleiben hoffe …

— Opening lines of the original German. The complete transcription of all 605 letters appears in the forthcoming Encounter Press critical edition; Brief 1 is shown in full as a sample.

German text: public domain (1773–75 first edition / 1845 Gesammelte Schriften).