Letters · Erster Band · Theil I (1773)

A heartfelt prayer for the appearing of God in the soul. On the spiritual voyage, and how to leave the rudder to Jesus.

Bd I · Th I · Brief 90 · Der neunzigste Brief

Addressee — Adolf Weber (1692–1723), of Haan — Tersteegen's friend and a fellow-member of the nebenkirchliche Versammlung at Mülheim. Addressed "Mein herzgeliebter Bruder!" (intimate du). The P.S. greets Weber's mother.
Date — 1721 — attested: the 1773 print itself carries the year "1721" in the signature. The earliest surviving Tersteegen letter (he was ~24).
Provenance — Translated from the public-domain 1773 first edition (Theil I, pp. 241–246), in GS 1845 orthography, collated against the 1845 Gesammelte Schriften, Hartman's 1819 reprint. Addressee, date. All public-domain.

The Ninetieth Letter.

A heartfelt prayer for the appearing of God in the soul. On the spiritual voyage, and how to leave the rudder to Jesus.

Jesus be all to our souls, in time and eternity!

My dearly beloved brother!

You will readily believe that it is not the lack of my love that is the cause of my not having written to you for so long; rather (though I will not altogether excuse my negligence) the chief cause has been that the Lord has given me neither freedom of spirit nor matter to write of, to be able to write to you — for which I have otherwise always had a longing. The other cause is this: that I still kept some hope of seeing your face once more before winter, of which I now, however, greatly doubt — unless you should come over once again. Yet I have nonetheless often embraced you in spirit, and, in a peculiarly tender love and affection, have wished and prayed for you before the eyes of the Lord that very thing (and do so still in this moment, as He, the Lord, well sees) for which my own soul longs from its innermost powers: namely, the essential appearing of the Lord in the ground of our souls, and the glorious, quieting, sanctifying and beatifying inward knowledge bound up with it.

Ah yes! Thou our God, and our All! Thou eternally delighting and wholly quieting Being of love! This one thing — so to find Thee, and so to behold Thee — is what I ask of Thee in humility before Thine eyes, for us and for all who long for it with us, and would gladly have of Thee: to behold this Thy beautiful worship in Thy house all our life long, and to perform it ourselves. So then, to that end, soothe the bitter forces of our nature through the balsam-saps of Thy love! Let our restless self-will and self-love sink down in gentle stillness at Thy feet; still our stormy emotions, and gather our scattered desires and thoughts into a quiet Now and Moment; and let us, so wholly, with all that we are, become Thine own peculiar offering; then shall we indeed be able to behold Thee in a childlike, resigned mind, and with simplified dove's eyes, Thou Being of simplicity! Ah, but one glance into the innermost being of our soul! So will it come to pass; so shall we find this All in the One. Thou, O our God, dwellest in eternity; so let then time and place also fall away from us, that we may behold Thee, and our so-long-driven, well-nigh pined-away spirit may rest again in its original fatherland and in Thy Father-arms! At least let it once taste what it is to hunger and thirst no more, but to have enough! So indeed will it be, O Love, when our spirit shall have found Thine. O how soon would it stand still! How soon would it become aware that it is in the very place where it must and would be! Ah, that it might only, right soon, essentially come to pass! Thou hast drawn us by Thy attracting power, so that we must now run after Thee; Thy hand has wounded us, and nothing but Thy countenance can heal us; let us then soon behold it, O God, that from the beholding of Thy countenance we may be transformed into Thy Godhead-image from one clearness to another, and Thou mayest thus eternally have Thy pleasure and delight in us, and we in Thee — yea, Amen!

See, dear brother, this is what my heart wishes, and toward which I stretch myself, though in much weakness.

You write to Brother H. that you did not know where I was? Now, however, you will easily be able to see from this that, by God's keeping, I am thus far still on the journey to the still eternity, whither I yet hope to arrive within time. But just as one, on the great world-sea, when in stormy weather neither sun nor star appears, cannot know where one is, just so little can I tell you exactly either. I would often gladly know it myself. But I hope my Jesus will sit at the rudder, and His Spirit will drive my little ship; and because I now can and will not row against the wind, I give my little ship over to it, with Paul and his companions (Acts 27:15) — provided only that I take care not to remain stuck on any sandbank of self-hood; then let it go as it will. If I then even suffer shipwreck, it will only be in the sea of the Godhead, whose abyss is as good to me as the best haven. But, dear brother, how hard nature comes to it — to venture thus, bare, without any certainty, and to make so heroic a going-out from ourselves! Yet were we wise, and lost ourselves right soon and thoroughly, with closed eyes, we should have therein no danger at all, and nothing evil would befall us; rather we should, according to the precious promise of our Jesus, find ourselves again the more richly in God — could one but believe it and put it into practice!

Nevertheless, dear brother, let us henceforth, by the Lord's help, only set it freely to work, and in faith trust and wait upon the promise of God! He can grant it to us very easily, in a moment, and let us find unexpectedly what we have often sought for many a year. To Him, the faithful Triune God of love — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — be the honor, from eternity to eternity, Amen!

Your loving, weak fellow-soldier and brother in the Lord. 1721.

P.S. I greet your mother too, heartily, and wish her much strength of body and of spirit. Remember me also, as a most inconstant child; may the Lord not lay it to my charge — and you too will overlook it if, in the writing of this letter, anything of self or of impurity should have crept in; I do not give it out for words of God. It costs me no little to collect myself so much, in this present time, in order to speak or write anything orderly.

❦

German

Der neunzigste Brief.

Inniges Gebet um die Erscheinung GOttes in der Seele. Von der geistlichen Schifffahrt, und wie das Ruder an JEsum zu überlassen.

JEsus sey unseren Seelen alles in Zeit und Ewigkeit!

Mein herzgeliebter Bruder! Du wirst selber gern glauben, daß nicht der Mangel meiner Liebe Ursach ist, daß ich dir so lange nicht geschrieben habe; sondern (ob ich wohl meine Nachläßigkeit nicht so gar entschuldigen will) die fürnehmste Ursache ist gewesen, weil mir der HErr weder Freiheit des Geistes …

— 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. The earliest of Tersteegen's surviving letters — 1721, when he was about twenty-four — written to his friend and fellow-seeker Adolf Weber. It braids two things together. First, a soaring prayer for "the essential appearing of God in the ground of the soul": that God would soothe the bitter forces of our nature with "the balsam-saps of His love," let our self-will sink down at His feet, gather our scattered thoughts into "a quiet Now," and let our long-driven spirit rest at last in "its original fatherland," in the Father's arms. Then, a famous and very personal image: asked where he is, Tersteegen answers like a sailor on the open sea in a storm — unable to see sun or star, and so unable to say where he is. He hopes only that Jesus will sit at the rudder and the Spirit drive his little ship; since he cannot row against the wind, he hands the ship over, "with Paul and his companions" in the Acts shipwreck — and even if he is wrecked, it will only be "in the sea of the Godhead, whose abyss is as good to me as the best haven." It ends in a Trinitarian doxology, his signature, and a tender postscript greeting Weber's mother and quietly disowning anything "of self" that may have crept into the writing.

A few words and echoes.

Jesus be all. The opening invocation — Christ as everything to the soul, in time and eternity; the note of Paul's "that God may be all in all" (First Corinthians).
The appearing of God in the ground of the soul. Tersteegen's deepest longing, and his mystical keyword — the ground, the soul's floor where God is revealed within (as Paul speaks of God revealing His Son "in me," Galatians).
From one clearness to another. The soul transformed into the "Godhead-image" from glory to glory — Paul's word in Second Corinthians.
Hunger and thirst no more. The promise of Revelation — to want nothing, having enough in God.
The rudder, and Paul's shipwreck. The heart of the letter: surrendering the rudder to Jesus, and — with Paul's crew, who "let her drive" before the storm (Acts) — giving the ship over to the wind of the Spirit.
Lose ourselves, and find ourselves in God. Jesus' paradox — whoever loses his life will find it (Matthew) — made into the whole venture of the "spiritual voyage."
To the Triune God be the honor. The closing doxology, to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Cite this letter

Gerhard Tersteegen, Geistliche und erbauliche Briefe, Erster Band, I. Theil, Brief 90 (Solingen, 1773–75); trans. Jarred Fenlason, https://gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdi-thi-090.html.

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