The mingling of nature and grace. The life of Jesus. True inwardness.
The Thirtieth Letter.
The mingling of nature and grace. The life of Jesus. True inwardness.
Beloved brother!
So long, dear brother, have we felt the workings of the Spirit within us, and yet we still go to work so much in our own selves. The best is but a wretched mingling of nature and grace in our doing and our being. Ah, what a difference it is when Jesus works in us and upon us, and when He quickens us! Nature ever runs ahead. The first stirrings in all our doing, speaking, and undertaking are mostly impure and mixed. Through bare self-abandonment and humility we must ever bow ourselves again into and beneath God in our ground, and let Him begin in us what we would have carried out — that our doing may be pure, and unto the glorifying of God in Christ Jesus. Jesus is risen; life and imperishable being hath He brought to light. The seed of this divine life will — God be praised! — spring up in our inward part: only let us be kept finely inward and still toward it, and this precious fruit tended, that it may grow green and bring forth fruit unto life everlasting!
Nothing more will please me at all that is not the life of Jesus in us; apart from that, all is a dream and a show, or, with Paul, loss and dung. Help me with your inward prayers, that this light may become substance in me!
Let us, then, neglect no time and no drawing, to hold ourselves inwardly by and before the Lord! I write ever the same, for it seems to me that nothing is in peril, so long as we do but exercise ourselves, according to our state, in inward prayer. True inwardness is the children's school, wherein one learns all wisdom. Lord Jesus! let what is ours stand still and die, that Thou alone mayest live. Amen!
German
Der dreißigste Brief.
Vermischung der Natur und Gnade. Leben JEsu. Wahre Innigkeit.
Geliebter Bruder!
So lange, lieber Bruder! haben wir die Wirkungen des Geistes in uns verspüret, und gehen doch noch so viel in uns selber zu Werk.
— 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. A compact, ardent meditation to a brother on a lifelong frustration: how much of even our best is "a wretched mingling of nature and grace." We have long "felt the workings of the Spirit," Tersteegen says, "and yet we still go to work so much in our own selves" — "nature ever runs ahead," and "the first stirrings in all our doing, speaking, and undertaking are mostly impure and mixed." The remedy is not more effort but less self: "through bare self-abandonment and humility we must ever bow ourselves again… beneath God in our ground, and let him begin in us what we would have carried out." Then our doing becomes pure, "to the glorifying of God in Christ Jesus." The risen Christ has "brought life… to light," and "the seed of this divine life" wants to "spring up in our inward part," if only we keep "finely inward and still" and tend "this precious fruit." Nothing pleases him now, he says, "that is not the life of Jesus in us"; all else is "a dream and a show, or, with Paul, loss and dung." He asks their prayers "that this light may become substance in me," and ends with a cry that gathers up the whole letter: "Lord Jesus! let what is ours stand still and die, that thou alone mayest live."
A few words and echoes.
- The mingling of nature and grace. His honest diagnosis of the spiritual life: even our best acts are a mixture, because "nature ever runs ahead" of grace. The cure is to let God "begin in us," rather than acting first ourselves.
- Let Jesus begin. His remedy in a phrase: through "self-abandonment and humility," to stop initiating and instead "let him begin in us what we would have carried out" — so that the work is his, and pure.
- Loss and dung. His stark verdict on everything that is "not the life of Jesus in us," borrowing Paul's blunt word in Philippians — all else "a dream and a show."
- The children's school. His name for "true inwardness" — the humble "school" where "one learns all wisdom," open only to those willing to become small.
- That thou alone mayest live. The letter's closing prayer, and the heart of his whole spirituality: "let what is ours stand still and die, that thou alone mayest live."
trans. Jarred Fenlason · gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdi-thi-030 · all rights reservedEnglish translation © Jarred Fenlason · All rights reserved · gerhardtersteegen.com.