How one is to grow accustomed, childlike and quiet, to God and His working.

The Seventy-Sixth Letter.

How one is to grow accustomed, childlike and quiet, to God and His working.

Dearly beloved sister!

Your little letter has gladdened me, because it is written out of a simple heart. The Being that secretly stills you is, beyond all doubt, God, your highest good. Have you ever found, in anything created, something that could give you such rest and gentle well-being within? The impression of a still, loving reverence, which remains even under the work, gives enough to know that it is the Lord. It is true, this Something, to which you hold yourself by an inward inclining, you do not know distinctly; but this not-knowing is a true knowing, and this generality is better and more delightful than a thousand particularities.

The more you want to see, know, and grasp, the less you will know. Only close your eye quietly and innocently; the Lord must open it to you Himself. You must let yourself be gathered more than gather yourself, give the working of God passive room, and let yourself go, especially in the time of solitude. If your own looking or working comes too much — which will often, and most of all, happen when you most want to avoid it — then do not disturb yourself at all, but let it sink again of itself, or suffer quietly out of love to God, should all manner of distractions, yea temptations, come.

In general you must overcome all evil and all distractions, yea the whole world, not by force and unrest, but by quiet suffering and disregarding, by forgetting, and by shutting the eye before it. There is Another in us who fights for us; look upon Him with love.

Though I now indeed say that you must hold yourself passively toward God's working, yet I by no means therefore blame all working. You must work when God makes you work, and moves you to this or that heart-activity, also when He brings forth in you such inward sighs under your work, as you report in your letter; only that all happen gently, quietly, and without straining. You mark, then, that I approve your conduct toward God.

I remind you, my sister! let not the Tempter in the reason bring you into unrest through doubt, as if your leading were not of God, and as if God could not make Himself so familiar with such a one as were so and so wretched. Yea! so God wills it; so is it His good pleasure, that you may know to speak of nothing but grace, and may love Him for nothing, as you are loved by Him for nothing.

Since, then, the Lord once gives sufficiently to know that He will love you and impart Himself to your soul — be as you will — so do you too only shut the little eye before yourself, and let yourself be loved by Him, and let Him do with you what pleases Him; His love will surely swallow up all your miseries, and make you fair in His eyes, not in your own.

I cannot tell you how simple, will-less, and detached the Lord will have your heart, in order to be able to unite Himself with it: but you must only abide in Him, as well as you can; then will He Himself incline you to it, and so bring it about that you will marvel: for it is His work. Only leave all there that is created, and let your heart remain free, wholly dedicated to the divine Soul-friend; He will be to you essentially, purely, and without end all that which you would vainly hope for in another place.

But this I beg once more, my dear sister! and I wished I could so beg you that it might leave a strengthening impression with you your life long: Do but remain faithful to your dearest Soul-friend, even when trials and sufferings should come; become not straightway so fainthearted and disturbed when all manner of assaults and temptations come; only shut the little eye before it; suffer as well as you can, and believe that it is even then the time to show the Lord rightly that you love Him; let the will of your mind remain detached in all assaults. You have indeed no need at all to examine so exactly, afterward, whether the will has anywhere wavered. Lay all the blame on yourself; but for the rest, only see to it that you get away from the remembrance of evil the sooner the better, in order to sink yourself again into your good God. Not the evil, not the created, not yourself, not this nor that, but God alone must be your object.

Above all things — and let it ever go and stand with you however it will — let not fall the secret, sweet trust in God which He Himself has laid in you; believe surely, He will lay no temptation upon you, or He will also give you what is needful for it, for He is faithful.

German

Der sechsundsiebzigste Brief.

Wie man sich kindlich und ruhig an GOtt und Seine Wirkung gewöhnen soll.

Herzlichgeliebte Schwester!

Dein Brieflein hat mich vergnüget, weil es aus einfältigem Herzen geschrieben. Das Wesen, so dich heimlich beruhiget, ist ohne allen Zweifel GOtt, dein höchstes Gut.

— 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).