Letters · Erster Band · Theil I (1773)

An important blessing-wish.

Bd I · Th I · Brief 15 · Der fünfzehnte Brief

Addressee — "Geliebter Freund und Bruder" — a male friend (a brother in the circle); no name.
Date — none given in the 1773/GS print.
Provenance — translated from the 1845 Gesammelte Schriften (Bd I), collated against the 1773 first edition (both PD)

The Fifteenth Letter.

An important blessing-wish.

Beloved friend and brother!

May the peace of God be our strength and our stay in all sufferings, trials, and temptations — yes, even in hunger and thirst — upon our pilgrim-journey through the waste, strange land of this visible world, unto the unchangeable rest, in the wide land of the still eternity. Amen!

❦

German

Der fünfzehnte Brief.

Wichtiger Segenswunsch.

Geliebter Freund und Bruder!

Der Friede GOttes sey unsere Stärke und Stütze in allen Leiden, Proben, Versuchungen …

— 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).

Translator’s notes

What this letter is. The shortest letter in the collection — a single sentence of blessing to a "friend and brother." In one breath Tersteegen asks that "the peace of God" would be "our strength and our stay in all sufferings, trials, and temptations — yes, even in hunger and thirst — upon our pilgrim-journey through the waste, strange land of this visible world," until we reach "the unchangeable rest, in the wide land of the still eternity." It is his whole vision of the Christian life as a pilgrimage, compressed into a benediction: the world a "waste, strange land" to pass through, eternity the "wide land" of rest and stillness ahead.

A few words and echoes.

The peace of God as our stay. His blessing rests on Paul's "peace of God" — not calm circumstances but a peace that holds and supports ("our strength and our stay") through every trial.
Strangers and pilgrims. The soul is on a "pilgrim-journey through the waste, strange land of this visible world" — an echo of Hebrews' picture of the faithful as "strangers and pilgrims on the earth," at home only ahead.
The still eternity. His recurring name for the goal — "the wide land of the still eternity," an "unchangeable rest" — the Sabbath-rest that "remaineth… to the people of God."

Cite this letter

Gerhard Tersteegen, Geistliche und erbauliche Briefe, Erster Band, I. Theil, Brief 15 (Solingen, 1773–75); trans. Jarred Fenlason, https://gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdi-thi-015.html.

← Bd I · Th I · Brief 14 Bd I · Th I · Brief 16 →