The author's longing for the death of selfhood. The essential knowledge of God.

The Fifty-Third Letter.

The author's longing for the death of selfhood. The essential knowledge of God.

In the grace of Jesus, beloved members!

Your letter, which has refreshed me, I received in its time; I would gladly have answered it sooner, had circumstances allowed it.

I am ashamed before God that His children still concern themselves so much with me, that they inquire after my condition; and — if I might speak of it — were I to say what I find of it within me, one would unjustly take it for a humility in me, whereas I am indeed still far removed from the essence of this divine virtue. Ah! had we essential humility, we should also have God essentially, and a paradisiacal peace.

As concerns my bodily state: it is the truth that I have been very weak these several weeks. With a lingering fever went coupled an exhaustion of nature and of the vital spirits, and a great weakness of the head, so that my thoughts several times suddenly failed; though I have not, to my knowledge, kept my bed a single whole day, but have always gone about withal, and have been able in some measure to render my feeble services to my neighbor. Lack of rest and of solitude may well contribute much thereto; and because I saw this plainly enough, and often lacked the fitness besides, I have let many of the letters I received lie unanswered, and have in some measure also declined the giving of counsel, so far as it might fittingly be done.

Now, these eight or ten days, God be praised! it is markedly better, though I remain still weak. What the Lord purposes with me is unknown to me. I desire to give myself over to Him for time and eternity, and to lose myself wholly in His pure mercy. He is almighty; He is all-good; He is all-wise, to purify me utterly and to prepare me according to His good pleasure; I myself can do nothing but hinder and defile His work. I do not yet long for bodily death, as it seems to me, but rather for that death in which I can no longer find nor see myself. Yet — yea! I long heartily, and cannot do otherwise than long for this: to behold and adore perfectly the God whom I know to be, and to be all Good; in the knowledge of whom I am assured that therein is to be found even the full blessedness of the eternal spirits — that His beholding is for us alone, and wholly enough, unto eternal life, even though to all eternity no image or thought of any other being, or of our own selves, should arise within us. O that the great and gracious God might from now on become truly great in our hearts — yea, so great, glorious, and lovely, that for the knowledge and remembrance of this great and near Being we might ever more forget ourselves and all the shadow-being of the visible and temporal things!

We who are called do ourselves hover here, in this midnight region, in such great darknesses, encompassed with the stinking mist of our earthly body and of other miseries, that the Sun of the living knowledge of God scarcely shines in upon us with a few faint glimpses. Nevertheless, if by dying and praying we faithfully dispose ourselves thereto, by means of divine grace, we can indeed find and know God so essentially — in the adorable darknesses of faith and in the inner sanctuary of the heart — that we have eternal life in Him.

This, it is true, I have by no means yet essentially attained, my beloved brethren! But I know it with as great a certainty as one can know a thing: that God is a Being so most perfect, that His love and remembrance alone are enough for us, in time and eternity, unto the rest of our souls. And not this alone; but if we children of men knew what a God our God is — what a happiness it is even so much as to think of Him, to adore Him, to honor, to love, and to praise Him; and how pleasing it is to the most high God when in this frailty we occupy ourselves with Him and bring Him our poor services — then I am certain the whole world would become one single temple, yea, a paradise; men would do nothing else but think of God alone, speak of God, glorify God, and would grow weary neither day nor night of bowing the knees of their heart and body before Him; we would want to know of nothing else but God alone; we would rejoice in nothing but God alone; and this we would do gladly, and with the highest delight, even though outwardly and inwardly we stood in suffering, and enjoyed no sensible consolations from God, until our death.

O beloved members! let us glorify God, who has called us to His glorious knowledge in Christ Jesus, notwithstanding all our deserts! Let us therefore all the more shun all seeming distractions, and abide with God alone, and go straight to Him by the way of the heart — the more we see that the laying-off of this earthly tabernacle draws near!

German

Der dreiundfünfzigste Brief.

Des Verfassers Verlangen nach dem Tod der Eigenheit. Wesentliche Erkenntniß GOttes.

In der Gnade JEsu geliebte Mitglieder!

Euer Schreiben, welches mich erquicket hat, habe ich zu seiner Zeit erhalten; ich hätte selbiges gern bälder beantwortet, wo die Umstände es hätten zugelassen.

— 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).