To the same person. A powerful encouragement under the feeling of her sins.

The Ninety-fourth Letter.

To the same person. A powerful encouragement under the feeling of her sins.

Beloved friend and sister!

I received your kind letter late yesterday evening through friend N.; and although the visits of several friends now take up my spare time considerably, I must nevertheless greet you herewith briefly, and answer you in some measure.

It seems to me I would say to you in spirit: Come, oppressed soul! give me your hand; I know counsel for all your distress. Come with me in spirit down to Bethlehem, into the stable, to the Child Jesus! We will fall down together before Him; and then tell Him, childlike and open-hearted, the very thing you have written to me — and also that which you cannot write or say. I know in some measure this dear Child's graciousness, and His divine power to help the worst of creatures; and even if it does not help you at once, one yet feels relief already, when one only laments to Him one's misery in simplicity of heart. This Child, beheld in spirit, can take from you the fear of God's wrath over your sins. For so God loved the world, and so on. God became a child, so that the penitent might see that He forgets and forgives their sins like a child, and does not rage like a hard man. This Child gives faith and trust. Who would not trust Him who lets Himself down so low?

You see no deliverance out of your misery, you write. Adam saw none either, nor all the saints after him; but God's wisdom saw and found what none of us could think of. That God did, and sent His Son (Romans 8:3). So it goes too with the work of redemption in us: it is a single work. Only be of good cheer! Jesus is Jesus; He will finish the work that His Father has given Him.

Your fear of offending God; your hatred of sin; and your grief over sin and the feeling of it — these are tokens that the grace of God is at work in your heart, and that the will of your mind takes no part in it.

That you find a relish in the little book The Hidden Life is dear to me; it suits you rightly just now; use it as long as you find nourishment in it. One must not imagine that only hermits and unmarried persons could and must live so — though it may indeed sometimes come easier to them in some circumstances, and in some points be practised somewhat otherwise. God will have all manner of things in His paradise: each must only bear fruit after its own kind (Genesis 1:11; 1 Corinthians 7:24).

Be content! you can still, in your station, become a saint. And do not be so utterly restless and unruly over your wretchedness in all things! You accomplish nothing by it, except that you only harm your body, and make your mind unfit to walk in a quiet spirit before the face of the Lord. Nature also grows only the more sullen thereby, so that the affect of anger the more easily seizes you and throws everything into confusion. Ah, may the eternal love of God, which has opened itself toward us in Christ's birth, penetrate your ground, that all the hardness and fierce forces of nature may be sweetened, and sink down in inward gentleness! I know: were this enemy overcome, more would surely fall along with it.

Madame Guyon, of whom you write, was married in her sixteenth year by her parents, almost against her will; God revealed Himself to her precisely in that state as an inwardly-present God, under a thousand crosses and bitter trials. A few weeks after her last childbed her husband died, whom she dearly loved; then she said to God: O Lord! I am thy handmaid; thou hast loosed my bonds — and so on (Psalm 116:16, to the end); and she pledged Him her chastity. I beg you, love your husband in the Lord, for that is the will of God; be friendly, loving, and ready to serve toward him in everything that is not against God. Gentleness and love can work wonders in us, and in others.

I could wish that you would not let yourself be disquieted by every single thought, or by outward circumstances; and that you would first turn inward a little, and look upon in God, and before God, that which causes you doubt and unrest. So do great mountains often vanish like wax, because one then sees into them in the light of truth. For example: in your deep sadness the temptation sometimes overtakes you — that you should give it up; and, since there is no way out anyhow, that you should take your portion only in this life, and bid farewell to the life of the cross, and the like. I know that such thoughts sometimes fall upon you so suddenly and forcibly that your whole nature is horrified at them and sinks down. But I should have to be a fool if I could not easily discern that such thoughts are only thoughts, and come nevermore out of your heart; and that the enemy is only intent on disquieting you thereby, and stealing your time.

Finally, believe freely that I have great compassion with you in your circumstances, and that I shall not forget you, in my poverty, before God. He who preserved the three men unharmed in the fiery furnace can and will also keep you from sin. One must sometimes give way a little, and of two evils choose the least, when one cannot get past both. What one cannot change, one must take as a cross from the Lord's hand. We must be bent and humbled by wondrous ways. Love solitude, and the inward prayer, as much as it can be done without harm to your household affairs.

May God make you inwardly free, together with me! Otherwise it may well be good that outwardly you are not yet so free as you might wish: who knows where we would lose ourselves? Let us hold still to the Lord's ordering, and let Him sanctify us in His own way, and not according to our mind! May the dear Child Jesus bless you and comfort you, that we may have peace in Him, even when otherwise, according to His own foretelling, we should have nothing but tribulation in the world! I remain

Your poor, weak brother.

Mülheim, the 27th of December, 1729.

German

Der vierundneunzigste Brief.

An dieselbe Person. Kräftige Aufmunterung unter dem Gefühl ihrer Sünden.

Geliebte Freundin und Schwester!

Euer Angenehmes habe gestern Abend durch Freund N. wohl erhalten; und, obwohl der Zuspruch etlicher Freunde mir jetzt die müßige Zeit ziemlich hinnimmt, so muß ich euch hiemit doch kürzlich begrüßen, und in etwa antworten.

— 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).