Encouragement to patient endurance at the cross.

What this letter is. A tender letter of encouragement to a "heart-beloved sister" caught in a long, heavy trial — what Tersteegen calls her "melting-furnace" — and longing for it to end. He opens with a blessing that quietly enlarges the familiar words of Scripture: "the peace of God, which is higher than all reason and deeper than all suffering" (adding his own "deeper than all suffering" to Paul's phrase). His compassion is real and unguarded: "were it in my power, no pains… would fall too heavy for me to procure thee some help or relief." But he cannot, and — more to the point — the One who can has chosen not to yet: "we foolish children must not wish to be wiser than the Father," but "believe in simplicity that He will have thee even now still in this melting-furnace, for holy causes, though hidden from us." His central counsel is to refuse a certain voice: "give no hearing to him who whispereth to thee: Come down from the cross!" — the mocker's taunt at Calvary turned into the tempter's whisper to a suffering soul. Instead she is to "wait until He let thee up out of the pit, who hath the keys of hell and of death, and who in a moment can turn the waters of tribulation into wine." If "murmuring and impatience come," she is to hear it as Jesus' own gentle reproof at Cana: "Woman, what have I to do with thee? My hour is not yet come." The letter then turns to a delicate personal situation — "the person" she must live with — counseling her to "meet her in gentle, compassionate love," to "render the duty owed" so long as it "keep within the bounds," but with a firm line drawn: "what is against nature is against God also." Through it all she is to "abide with thy mind… only detached, with the little child Jesus," letting "thy fire burn ever more gently, and a level path be made for the King of Peace." He closes with warmth and a promise to keep thinking it over: "I shall go on to weigh everything before God, and, when I receive nearer light, will send thee word."

A few words and echoes.

• Peace deeper than suffering. His opening blessing takes Paul's "the peace of God, which passeth all understanding" (Philippians 4:7) and adds a phrase of his own — "and deeper than all suffering." The peace he wishes her is not the absence of the trial but something that reaches beneath it.
• The melting-furnace. His name for her trial — the "melting-furnace" — is Isaiah's image of God refining His people "in the furnace of affliction" (Isaiah 48:10). Suffering is not meaningless but purifying, aimed at "a wholly holy end."
• Come down from the cross. His sharpest pastoral insight: the urge to escape the trial prematurely is the very voice that mocked Christ — "come down from the cross" (Matthew 27:40). To endure is to refuse that whisper and stay on the cross a little longer.
• Water into wine. His consolation borrows Cana (John 2): the One who holds "the keys of hell and of death" (Revelation 1:18) can "in a moment… turn the waters of tribulation into wine." And when impatience rises, he hands her Christ's own words to Mary — "My hour is not yet come" — as a loving reproof about God's timing. (Tersteegen's text cites this as "John 3"; it is John 2:4 — a printer's slip, corrected in the reference here.)
• The duty and its bounds. The letter's most delicate passage handles a hard domestic situation with real restraint: she is to serve "the person" in "gentle, compassionate love" and "render the duty owed" — but only "within the bounds," for "what is against nature is against God also." Tersteegen names no specifics and neither does the translation; the reticence is his.
• The King of Peace. His closing image — that her endurance would make "a level path… for the King of Peace" — weaves Isaiah's "make straight… a highway" (Isaiah 40:3) with the title of Christ as "King of Peace" (Hebrews 7:2). Her patient, gentled suffering is preparing a road for Him.