The vehemence of nature is best overcome by the pure life of love.
The Hundred and Eighth Letter.
The vehemence of nature is best overcome by the pure life of love.
Beloved friend and sister!
Be assured that I am often with you in spirit, and visit you, and wish you the Lord's strength to suffer all waves and storms like a rock in the sea. The vehemence and fretfulness of your nature often deal hard blows: only let the spirit sink and let itself down into the sea of the hidden Godhead, where all one's own fire is quenched, and everything hard must melt and flow away. O pure Love! Thou true life, Thou pure delight, Thou gentle power — without Thee we are in death, in anguish, in utter powerlessness. Nay! it cannot be called life, unless Thou live in us, and we in Thee; take us in, and swallow us up inwardly into Thyself, that Thou mayest transform us, and make us, out of children of wrath, into children of Thy love! Amen.
Ah, dear sister! lose and forget yourself yet more — just as if you were no more — and you will be helped. Do not take so to heart what befalls you from without; look upon all things and all people with an eye of innocence and heartfelt love! Perhaps you will soon go hence; therefore let nothing in but love — toward God, toward friends and enemies. Do not concern yourself with it when the affections stir and beat. Because, at such times, you do not always keep yourself inwardly resigned, therefore you commit so many a fault. When our bad neighbors quarrel, one must just hold the doors shut, if one would remain in peace.
The person you know of, bear in patience as well as you can. Against your husband's will you must not send her away, nor even speak of it, until Providence puts a better one into your hand, whom you might get in her stead. Offer yourself up to the Lord on all occasions!
This I have written in simplicity, just as my heart inclined me. May the Lord be with your spirit, in which I remain, greeting you heartily,
Your weak fellow-pilgrim.
Mülheim, 11 December 1730.
German
Der hundertundachte Brief.
Die Heftigkeit der Natur wird durch das reine Liebe-Leben am besten überwunden.
Geliebte Freundin und Schwester!
Seyd versichert, daß ich im Geist öfters bei euch bin, und euch besuche, und des HErrn Kraft zuwünsche, alle Wellen und Ungewitter, wie ein Fels im Meer, zu leiden.
— 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 about her own temperament — she is, by nature, vehement and easily vexed — and Tersteegen's counsel is that this "vehemence of nature" is not conquered by fighting it but dissolved by "the pure life of love." His central image is a plunge: let the spirit "sink and let itself down into the sea of the hidden Godhead," where "all one's own fire is quenched, and everything hard must melt and flow away." The letter then rises into a brief prayer to Love itself — "O pure Love! Thou true life… make us, out of children of wrath, into children of Thy love." From that height it comes right back down to the kitchen: forget yourself, don't take slights to heart, look at everyone "with an eye of innocence," let nothing in but love — and, most concretely, bear that difficult servant patiently and do not dismiss her against your husband's will until Providence sends a better. The mix of the mystical and the household is the whole point: the pure life of love is lived in both.
A few words and echoes.
- The vehemence of nature (Heftigkeit der Natur). Her quick, hot, irritable temper — the raw force of the unquiet self, which love, not effort, best overcomes.
- The sea of the hidden Godhead. His image for losing the small, burning self by sinking it into God as into an ocean — where hardness melts.
- O pure Love. The letter's short prayer, addressed directly to divine Love, that it would live in us and transform us.
- Children of wrath → children of love. An echo of Ephesians: we who "were by nature the children of wrath" are remade into children of God's love.
- Shut the doors when the neighbors quarrel. His homely picture of the inner life: when the "affections" (passions) start their brawling, don't join in — just close the doors and keep the peace.
- The person you know of. A servant or dependent Griesenbeck wished to be rid of; Tersteegen counsels patience and deference to her husband's judgment — the pure life of love, worked out in an ordinary household.
trans. Jarred Fenlason · gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdi-thi-108 · all rights reservedEnglish translation © Jarred Fenlason · All rights reserved · gerhardtersteegen.com.