A New Year's wish, in rhymes.
The Ninety-ninth Letter.
A New Year's wish, in rhymes.
My brother!
1. Your writing, of the name of our Jesus, and of the power of His love, delights my mind. I say "Amen" to your letter and to all its lines — only that I am not so faithful as you suppose.
2. I sat already grieving, looking on the very wounds that my unfaithfulness had made me in the old year. I thought: When shall I live rightly, after God's heart? I was intent upon new grace in the new year.
3. Then your letter comes, and renews my wounds, and touches me just where it did me pain. I remain, worthy friend, beholden to you for this service; your wish and faithful heart are a faithful counsel to me.
4. Yes, it is Jesus alone who heals my wounds, when the broken spirit lies at His feet, and hastens, like a fainting hart, to this fountain that stills the conscience and inwardly contents it.
5. In this name alone will I bow the knee; through His merit and blood will I stand before God: if I can truly bow myself in this name, then God's heart and heaven must stand open to me.
6. Yes, it is Jesus alone, and His powers of love, who brings the true life to our dead spirit; else the heart stays cold in the holy work, and all is defiled that love does not pierce through.
7. When Jesus' love-power touches the ground of the soul, when this pure glow contents the chaste mind, then self-hood is led into the death of Christ, till all becomes new, till God's life is victorious.
8. The power of love is great: faith can heave mountains — love can do it too, when it kindles the heart. It never compels; yet one must yield oneself when this free power binds up the whole of love.
9. Let the one man fill himself with empty husks: the lust of the creature gives no nourishing sap. Let another play in his head with a thousand childish whims: I desire Jesus only, and His power of love.
10. I am learned enough, when I but know Jesus, and my understanding's eye beholds the truth more brightly. I am content enough, when I burn in love, whereby Jesus confides Himself to me, and I myself to Him.
11. I am rich enough indeed, when Jesus only remains to me; let a man take goods and blood, and earth and heaven away. I am strong enough too; when love drives me, then cross and distress and dying are to me but gain.
12. Should pale Death strike me down in this year — when love makes me alive, then I cannot die. When God's holiness would set me before judgment, is Jesus only in me, then I fear no judgment.
13. Therefore it must indeed abide, as you have wished; my heart gives a constant echo to your wish. May heaven undersign the covenant: that Jesus only be loved in this year!
14. Let this alone be our work, into the eternities, to which your heart has bound itself here with mine! True, I am cold and slow, and weak on every side; yet I give you my hand, and speak a faltering Yes.
15. My friend! your faithful mind and first thoughts, with which you have made the beginning of this year — through no course of the times, nor trials, may they waver! So be this year, and your time, brought to fulfillment!
16. Love, after all, abides, when all knowledge ends. It needs no great art: only become a child! Whoever turns his whole desire, in spirit, into Jesus finds the full breast of love in the still ground.
17. May this spring fill your innermost part, and wholly overflow whatever steps against it! May this stream well forth through word and walk, and carry many a heart along in its course!
18. With this wish, my friend, shall my hand make its close; what I have not said well is nevertheless well meant. My heart shall greet your heart in the name of Jesus. Forget me not either! You know your friend.
Mülheim, the 30th of January, 1730.
German
Der neunundneunzigste Brief.
Neu-Jahrs-Wunsch in Reimen.
Mein Bruder!
1. Deine Schrift von unsers JEsu Namen, Und Seiner Liebe Kraft ergötzet meinen Sinn. Ich sag auf deinen Brief und alle Zeilen Amen; Nur daß ich nicht so treu, wie du gedenkest, bin.
— 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 one letter in this stretch that is not prose at all, but a poem: eighteen rhymed four-line stanzas, written on 30 January 1730 as a New Year's greeting to Pastor Johann Christoph Hencke of Duisburg. Hencke — a Lutheran, where Tersteegen came from the Reformed side — had sent Tersteegen a New Year's poem of his own on "the name of Jesus" (now lost), and this is Tersteegen's answer in kind: a rare glimpse of the great hymn-writer of the Blumengärtlein writing verse in a personal letter, and a moving record of a friendship that reached "across the confessional divide." The poem's whole burden is the sufficiency of Jesus. It is Jesus alone, he says, who heals the wounds of the past year — the fainting soul running "like a hart to the fountain" (Psalm 42). In His name alone will he bow the knee and stand before God; His love alone brings the dead spirit to life. Stanza by stanza the refrain deepens: "I am learned enough, when I but know Jesus … rich enough, when Jesus only remains to me … strong enough, when love drives me — then cross and death are but gain." Even pale Death, even God's own judgment, hold no terror "is Jesus only in me." Then he turns it into a covenant between the two friends for the new year — "that Jesus only be loved in this year" — gives Hencke his hand with "a faltering Yes," and closes with the great word of First Corinthians that outlasts everything else: "Love, after all, abides, when all knowledge ends. It needs no great art: only become a child!" The last stanza is pure friendship: "My heart shall greet your heart in the name of Jesus. Forget me not either! You know your friend."
On the English. Because this is verse, the rendering here is a close, line-by-line translation that keeps the sense and the stanza-shape exactly, but does not force English rhyme — so that nothing of Tersteegen's meaning is bent to fit a rhyme. A fully rhymed, metrical English version could be made as a separate step; this one is the faithful base.
A few words and echoes.
- Like a fainting hart, to this fountain (st. 4) — "As the hart panteth after the water brooks" (Psalm 42:1).
- Bow the knee … through His merit and blood (st. 5) — "I bow my knees unto the Father" (Ephesians 3:14); and an echo of Paul Eber's hymn "Christ's blood and righteousness."
- Faith can heave mountains (st. 8) — "if ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed" (Luke 17:6; Matthew 17:20; 1 Corinthians 13:2).
- Fill himself with empty husks (st. 9) — the prodigal, who "would fain have filled his belly with the husks" (Luke 15:16).
- Cross and dying are to me but gain (st. 11) — "for to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain" (Philippians 1:21).
- Is Jesus only in me (st. 12) — "Christ liveth in me" (Galatians 2:20).
- Love abides when all knowledge ends (st. 16) — "Charity never faileth … whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away" (1 Corinthians 13:8); and "except ye … become as little children" (Matthew 18:3).
trans. Jarred Fenlason · gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdi-thi-099 · all rights reservedEnglish translation © Jarred Fenlason · All rights reserved · gerhardtersteegen.com.