The childlike spirit. The child's school.
The Forty-Fourth Letter.
The childlike spirit. The child's school.
Dear brother!
Your last I have duly received ..... For the rest, it is always a joy to me to hear of your whole welfare, in soul and body. Let us, then, keep ourselves near the Source, dearest members, since it is so near to us, too! Let us, as naked and famishing little children, lay ourselves ever inwardly into the open mother's-lap, and there hunger, wait, suck, and love, in innocent child's-mind! To the dissipated mind, and to self-working reason, this is a folly and an offense, a waste of time and a plague; but to those who are thereby exercised, it is a wisdom and a power of God.
Since we now know the cunning of our soul-enemies, we ought so much the more to take heed that we be not overreached by specious enticements and the counsel of reason. Without inward sighing I cannot think of the indescribable harm I have suffered from this side. But, oh, what a precious school it is — to hold oneself just so, much like a little child, bare, undisguised, passive, before God in spirit, and to give ourselves over to the God hidden within us, yet essentially-present, without choosing or dividing.
In the schools of the world the pupils are soon masters and the children glad to be men; but here one would gladly become ever more a dumb child, and ever more forget oneself and all things. Ah, how inwardly well it goes with the heart's-child, that it thus has all in the One, and will have or know nothing else!
1. Where is the school, on earth, to find, where great men grow to childlike mind, and little ones are reckoned great? Where is the school in which men love, where all one owns the fee doth prove, and poor and bare one comes to wait? 2. Where learn I this — to unlearn all, and out of self and all to fall, where one small Child one Master hears? Yea, hears but One, and One obeys, to the One alone itself it lays, and takes the very thing it hears? 3. Where one is taught but ever to give, in all things, without living, live, in all one's suffering, without pain; in all to follow, asking naught, to all things "Yea," as one is taught, for every trial, prepared to remain. 4. Where learns one the deep silence — there to gaze, adore, and bow in prayer, in still and purest love's desire? Where learns one God alone to embrace, the doing-naught, the yielding-place, where learns one the child's-art entire? 5. Where, then, is such a school to find, the place where place and time unwind — (for there but Tempus præsens [present-time] reigns, because a constant Now alone remains?) — Still, soul! let cease your care and quest: God's self will gladly give you rest, deep in the soul's ground, when He stills you.
You will not take it amiss, dear brother, that I fall to rhyme-writing; it has happened quite without forethought — nor would I, even so, put a check upon the inclination, or the influence. May God let it become essential being in us all. Amen!
German
Der vierundvierzigste Brief.
Kindersinn. Kinderschule.
Lieber Bruder!
Dein Letztes habe ich richtig erhalten ..... Sonst ist mir's allewege erfreulich, euren sämmtlichen Wohlstand nach Seel und Leib zu vernehmen.
— 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 warm, overflowing letter to a brother and his circle on what Tersteegen calls the child's-mind and the child's school. He urges them to "keep ourselves near the Source" and to lie down "as naked and famishing little children… into the open mother's-lap," there to "hunger, wait, suck, and love, in innocent child's-mind." To worldly reason this looks like "a folly and an offense, a waste of time and a plague"; but "to those who are thereby exercised, it is a wisdom and a power of God." He warns against being "overreached by specious enticements and the counsel of reason" — confessing "the indescribable harm I have suffered from this side" — and holds up instead the "precious school" of holding oneself "bare, undisguised, passive, before God in spirit." His paradox is deliberate: "In the schools of the world the pupils are soon masters and the children glad to be men; but here one would gladly become ever more a dumb child," having "all in the One." Then the letter does something rare — it breaks into verse. Five stanzas ask, over and over, "Where is the school, on earth, to find, where great men grow to childlike mind?" — a school where "all one owns" is the tuition, where "one small Child one Master hears," where one learns "the deep silence," "God alone to embrace," "the doing-naught, the yielding-place," and where at last "place and time unwind" into "a constant Now." The answer comes only in the final lines: "Still, soul! let cease thy care and quest: God's self will gladly give thee rest… when He stills thee." He apologizes, half-smiling, for falling "to rhyme-writing… quite without forethought," and prays "God let it become essential being in us all."
A few words and echoes.
- The child's-mind. The letter's whole burden is Christ's word that one must "become as little children" to enter the kingdom (Matthew 18:3; Mark 10:15). Tersteegen presses it to its edge — not just childlike but a "dumb child," content to know nothing but "the One."
- A folly to reason, a power to the exercised. His defense of the childlike way — foolishness to "self-working reason," but "a wisdom and a power of God" to those trained in it — echoes Paul on the cross as folly to the world yet "the power of God" to the called (1 Corinthians 1:23–24).
- The child's school. The five-stanza hymn is the heart of the letter: an extended riddle whose answer is that this school has no earthly location — its "place" is where "place and time unwind," the ever-present Now of God. One Latin phrase, Tempus praesens ("present-time"), is left in and glossed.
- When He stills thee. The poem's resolution is not an achievement but a gift: the restless questioning soul is simply told to be still and receive, "deep in the soul's ground, when He stills thee" — the whole "school" turning out to be a matter of being quieted by God.
- A rare glimpse of the hymn-writer. Tersteegen was one of the great hymn-writers of his tradition; this letter catches the poet breaking through the pastor "without forethought," and asking that the verse become not just words but "essential being."
trans. Jarred Fenlason · gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdi-thi-044 · all rights reservedEnglish translation © Jarred Fenlason · All rights reserved · gerhardtersteegen.com.