Deaths should rouse us to go forth to meet the Bridegroom.

What this letter is. A short, radiant note to a brother, written on hearing of several deaths in the circle. Rather than dwell on grief, Tersteegen turns the news into a summons. "The deaths whereof thou tellest," and others he has heard of "since thou didst depart from us," "should indeed awaken us and most powerfully spur us to go forth with our spirit to meet the Bridegroom." The whole letter is woven from Christ's parable of the ten virgins: the deaths are the midnight cry, and the brethren are to be like "the wise virgins" who "find entrance into the wedding-hall of essential communion with God at the fitting time." His one prayer is for readiness of a particular kind — emptiness: "Ah, that we might but remain before the Lord with emptied vessels, and, in still equanimity and inwardness, take up all dying-influences and all living-influences out of the so-near fullness of Jesus!" It ends not in fear but in childlike dependence: "Lord, help me and my brethren and sisters! We are indeed Thy called, poor children."

A few words and echoes.

• Deaths as a wedding-summons. The letter's whole move is to hear in mortality not a knell but a call to the marriage feast. Death in the circle becomes the midnight cry of the parable — "go ye out to meet him" (Matthew 25:1–13) — and readiness for death becomes readiness for the Bridegroom.
• The wise virgins and the wedding-hall. Entrance "with the wise virgins" into "the wedding-hall of essential communion with God" turns the parable inward: the marriage is not only a future event but the real, present fellowship with God that the ready soul already begins to enter.
• Emptied vessels. His image for readiness is emptiness, not achievement — "that we might but remain before the Lord with emptied vessels." Only the emptied soul can "take up" what flows "out of the so-near fullness of Jesus" (John 1:16). The point is receptivity, not attainment.
• Dying- and living-influences. A characteristic doublet: from Christ's nearness the soul draws both what puts the old self to death and what makes it alive — the same fullness working in two directions, received in "still equanimity and inwardness."
• Thy poor children. The close disarms the whole solemn theme with a child's petition — "Lord, help me and my brethren and sisters!" Readiness for the Bridegroom turns out to rest not on the soul's strength but on being God's "called, poor children."