Letters · Erster Band · Theil I (1773)

Of the power of love and of inward peace.

Bd I · Th I · Brief 104 · Der hundertundvierte Brief

Addressee — An Christiana Maria Griesenbeck (née Engels, 1707–1741), Mülheim — his most frequent correspondent; addressed "Vielgeliebte Freundin und Schwester!" with the polite Ihr/euch shading into the intimate dir/dich ("und sonderlich dir, geliebte Schwester!").
Date — 5 August 1730, from Mülheim — about six weeks after Brief 103.
Provenance — Translated from the public-domain 1773 first edition (Theil I, pp. 296–297), in normalized GS 1845 orthography, collated against the 1845 Gesammelte Schriften, Hartman's 1819 reprint. All public-domain.

The Hundred and Fourth Letter.

Of the power of love and of inward peace.

Dearly beloved friend and sister!

Love and peace are the food and strength of the spirit. Let all go as it will! Light or darkness; sweet or sour; pressed from within or from without. If only our spirit remain loving and peaceable toward God, toward our neighbor, and — N.B. — toward ourselves, then we can, in all things, according to the ground, abide well content in the present, and shall not, through any restless craving after something future, lose the present moment. Neither shall we lack any power for suffering and for striving; for love, paired with peace, takes all things well; it lets in nothing evil, and turns even the evil into good. Ah, that then nothing might have power to dislodge our spirit out of the sweet, peaceable element of love! The enemy will surely not cease to shift us, now this way, now that, out of this our stronghold: but everything — however plausible it may be — that displaces us out of love and brings us into unrest must be suspect to us. Our weakness, too, will yet often push us beginners away. Could we but then, without much unrest and striving, at once sink ourselves again deep into this ground of love and peace — that is, into God — saying with David: Return again to thy rest, O my soul! for the Lord doeth thee good.

May God give us this — and you especially, beloved sister! — essentially into the heart, and let the hidden drawing of His love work so mightily in the ground that our whole self may be taken up by it, to live, to suffer, and to die in love! May this peaceable fruit of righteousness ever more green forth out of and beneath all your sufferings and sorrowful-seeming chastisements of the Father! Amen!

I send herewith to your M. a little book, which may God bless to edification! I greet you heartily in the love of Jesus. Pray diligently for me: I can indeed, even in my misery, so utterly not forget it, that often my own misery makes me think the more of the wretched.

Your weak fellow-brother.

Mülheim, 5 August 1730.

❦

German

Der hundertundvierte Brief.

Von der Kraft der Liebe und des inneren Friedens.

Vielgeliebte Freundin und Schwester!

Die Liebe und der Friede sind des Geistes Speise und Kraft. Laß alles gehen, wie es will!

— 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 letter to Christiana Maria Griesenbeck on the quiet power of love and inward peace. Its governing image is that love and peace together are "the food and strength of the spirit" — and that a spirit kept loving and peaceable (toward God, toward one's neighbor, and, he adds pointedly, toward oneself) can stay content in the present through anything: "light or darkness, sweet or sour." Love wedded to peace, he says, "takes all things well and turns even the evil into good." The great danger is being jolted out of "the sweet, peaceable element of love" — whether by the enemy or by our own beginner's weakness — and the remedy is simply to sink back at once into the ground of love and peace, "that is, into God," echoing the Psalm: "Return unto thy rest, O my soul." He ends homely and warm: a little book sent along to her husband, a request for prayer, and the confession that his own wretchedness only makes him remember other suffering people the more.

A few words and echoes.

The element of love. Tersteegen pictures love as the native "element" a fish lives in — the medium the spirit is meant to breathe; to be knocked out of it is the one thing to hold suspect, however plausible the cause looks.
"Turns even the evil into good." An echo of Paul (Romans) and of Joseph's word to his brothers — love takes in nothing evil, yet transmutes what evil comes.
The ground (Grund). His word for the deep floor of the soul where it rests in God — "sink deep into this ground of love and peace, that is, into God." Losing peace means being pulled up off that floor; recovering it means settling back down onto it.
"Return unto thy rest, O my soul." Psalm 116 — the soul talking itself back down into God's rest "because the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee."
Peaceable fruit of righteousness. From Hebrews 12: the calm fruit that "sorrowful-seeming" chastisement is meant, in time, to grow.
N.B. toward ourselves. His one Latin flag in the letter — a nota bene underlining the hardest of the three: to be gentle and peaceable toward oneself, not only toward God and neighbor.

Cite this letter

Gerhard Tersteegen, Geistliche und erbauliche Briefe, Erster Band, I. Theil, Brief 104 (Solingen, 1773–75); trans. Jarred Fenlason, https://gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdi-thi-104.html.

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