Letters · Erster Band · Theil I (1773)

Comfort and instruction to a soul standing in the fire of inward purification.

Bd I · Th I · Brief 73 · Der dreiundsiebzigste Brief

Addressee — "Liebes Kind!" — a spiritual directee, a soul in the "fire of inward purification," addressed intimately (du). A short letter of comfort answering her Brieflein.
Date — none explicit (a reply, but no date given in the print).
Provenance — Translated from the public-domain 1773 first edition (Theil I, pp. 192–193), in GS 1845 orthography, collated against the 1845 Gesammelte Schriften and Hartman's 1819 reprint. All public-domain.

The Seventy-Third Letter.

Comfort and instruction to a soul standing in the fire of inward purification.

Dear Child!

Just now your little letter is handed to me, which is welcome to me; I lay it before the Lord, and turn for answer to the 18th Psalm, namely the 36th and 37th verses: When Thou humblest me, Thou makest me great; Thou makest room under me to walk, that my ankles do not slip. I have, as I think, a true compassion with you in your present condition, yet I durst not pray you out of it, even if it stood with me [to do so]. You are in the hand of One who has infinitely more compassion than I. Let Him but do it, and despair not; He will humble you, that you in Him, and He in you, may be great for ever; you feel the bitternesses of the way, but see not the blessednesses of the end whither the way leads; and so it must now be. Not the sight of our humility, but the sight and the experience of our misery and nothingness makes us pleasing to God. Let the willing and quiet experience of your nothingness be a constant adoration of the All-ness of God! Beneath you the Lord will make room; therefore you must not want to hold yourself up, but let yourself sink — not, I mean, through the exercise of recollection, of which you are now not capable, but through a simple enduring, forgetting, and giving-away of yourself, as one lets a thing sink out of the hand that grows too heavy for one, or that one surrenders: thereby alone will you find room. You are in no danger of sinking into sin; the Lord will hold you, that your ankles do not slip, for you have no sinful will. One thing more! look not upon yourself in unbelief; look not upon sin; and when you must see both, then comfort yourself with this, that your Jesus sees it too, who is unchanged and alone blessed, and then only begin the 18th Psalm again from the beginning: Heartily do I love Thee, O Lord! and so forth — and fear not that your mouth lies therein, for I know you, and the Lord still better. In letting go you find the bare trust. But I beg you once more, as I have so often done: seek the ground of your trust in the pure grace of God, in the sweet name of Jesus, which is and shall be your stay, your shield, and eternal salvation. I forget you not.

Your devoted, weak brother.

❦

German

Der dreiundsiebzigste Brief.

Trost und Unterricht an eine in dem Feuer der inwendigen Läuterung stehende Seele.

Liebes Kind!

So eben wird mir dein Brieflein gereichet, so mir angenehm; ich lege es vor dem HErrn nieder, und schlage zur Antwort auf den 18ten Psalm, und zwar den 36. und 37. Vers: Wann Du mich demüthigest, machest Du mich groß; Du machest unter mir Raum zu gehen …

— 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 short, tender letter of comfort to a spiritual "child" — a soul passing through what Tersteegen calls "the fire of inward purification." She has written in distress, and his answer is not to pray her out of the trial but to steady her within it. He opens the eighteenth Psalm and reads her its promise: "when thou humblest me, thou makest me great… that my ankles do not slip." She is in the hands, he says, of One who has "infinitely more compassion than I"; her task is not to hold herself up but to "let herself sink" — not by any strenuous inward exercise she is now unable to perform, but by a simple enduring and letting-go, "as one lets a thing sink out of the hand that grows too heavy." She is in no danger of "sinking into sin," for she has "no sinful will"; and when unbelief or the sight of sin presses on her, she is to remember that Jesus sees them too, and to begin the psalm again — "heartily do I love thee, O Lord!" — without fearing that her mouth lies. "In letting go," he tells her, "you find the bare trust."

A few words and echoes.

The fire of purification. His image for what she is enduring: an inward refining, like metal in the fire — painful, but the way to "the blessednesses of the end."
Psalm 18. The whole letter is framed by this psalm — opened at its promise that God "makes room" so the feet do not slip, and closed by returning to its first line, "heartily do I love thee, O Lord."
Letting yourself sink. Not collapse but release: dropping oneself into God's hand "as one lets a thing sink" that has grown too heavy to hold — his name for a quiet self-abandonment.
The all-ness of God. He turns her sense of her own "nothingness" into worship: the willing experience of being nothing becomes "a constant adoration" of the God who is all.
In letting go, the bare trust. His core counsel: it is precisely in releasing her grip — on herself, on her own performance — that she will find a naked, unpropped trust in "the pure grace of God."

Cite this letter

Gerhard Tersteegen, Geistliche und erbauliche Briefe, Erster Band, I. Theil, Brief 73 (Solingen, 1773–75); trans. Jarred Fenlason, https://gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdi-thi-073.html.

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