Letters · Erster Band · Theil I (1773)

God's faithful providence in outward things should drive us to trust Him wholly in the inner life too.

Bd I · Th I · Brief 110 · Der hundertundzehnte Brief

Addressee — Both = the human recipient → English you.
Date — 21 January 1731, from Mülheim — about four weeks after Brief 109 (the childbirth).
Provenance — Translated from the public-domain 1773 first edition (Theil I, pp. 312–314), in normalized GS 1845 orthography, collated against the 1845 Gesammelte Schriften, Hartman's 1819 reprint. All public-domain.

The Hundred and Tenth Letter.

God's faithful providence in outward things should drive us to trust Him wholly in the inner life too.

Beloved friend in the grace of the Lord!

The thing desired …. comes herewith: may God give His blessing to its wholesome use! Yea, may the Lord be praised and glorified in this also, that He has, against all human expectation, so graciously helped your wife. You have cause to preach yourself a good sermon — or set yourself a good exercise — upon 2 Corinthians 1:9 and 10. I will gladly add my poor sighs, after the eleventh little verse that follows, according to the grace the Lord bestows.

Is it not true, beloved friend, that so many and marked traces of the faithfulness, help, and providence of God ought to put one right to the blush over all our own worrying and forecasting — that we might give ourselves over, body and soul, to such a God more than ever has been done before?

If He already helps so faithfully, and cares so fatherly, while we yet trust Him so little, or not at all — ah, what wonders of His divine hand would we not experience, in regard to our body, and to our souls as well, if we would shut the eyes of all our own care, and give ourselves over to Him wholly, with all that is ours, in true trust!

God does us good in outward things to show us how gladly He would do us much more good in the inner: therefore we must not hang too much upon the outward, and always want to have something good after our own thoughts, but let ourselves be lured thereby to the spiritual — to those essential and everlastingly abiding goods, which are won for us in Christ, and are to be found quite near, in the spirit.

I must break off for lack of time. Do not forget your little verse: "But this befell, to the end that…" I greet you, and your wife also, heartily; tell her in my name: she should strive to keep herself gathered-in, in the love of God, in spirit, as far as is possible through God's grace, that she may be armed in still peace against the trials to come. God grant it!

I greet …. and remain

The beloved friend's fellow-pilgrim.

Mülheim, 21 January 1731.

❦

German

Der hundertundzehnte Brief.

Die treue Vorsorge GOttes im Aeußeren soll uns antreiben auch im Inneren Ihme ganz zu vertrauen.

Geliebter Freund in der Gnade des HErrn!

Das Verlangte .... kommt hiebei: GOtt gebe zum heilsamen Gebrauch Seinen Segen! Ja, der HErr müsse auch in diesem gelobet und verherrlichet seyn, daß Er seiner Frau wider alles menschliche Vermuthen so gütiglich geholfen.

— 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 short letter to a man we have met only at the edges of the collection — the husband of Christiana Maria Griesenbeck, Tersteegen's most frequent correspondent — written a month after she came safely through the childbirth of Brief 109. It is at once a thank-you and a gentle nudge. The Lord, Tersteegen says, has "against all human expectation" delivered his wife; let that outward mercy become an inward lesson. His whole point is a movement from the seen to the unseen: "God does us good in outward things to show us how gladly He would do us much more good in the inner." If God already helps "so faithfully" and cares "so fatherly" while we trust Him so little, what would we not receive if we simply "shut the eyes of all our own care" and gave ourselves over to Him entirely? He points the husband to a specific text to chew on — 2 Corinthians 1, on being brought low "that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raiseth the dead" — and closes with greetings to husband and wife, and a word for her to keep herself "gathered in" against trials still to come.

A few words and echoes.

The courtesy address. Tersteegen writes to Herr Griesenbeck more formally than to his wife — in the polite third-person manner of the age ("Er," rendered here as "you"). It marks a real, respectful distance: a friend, not the intimate "brother" of the letters to his wife.
"The thing desired …." The letter opens by enclosing something the friend had asked for — a book or a written piece — which the print discreetly leaves blank. The blank is in the 1773 itself.
2 Corinthians 1:9–10. Paul's word that God let him be pressed down to death "that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead" — the very lesson of a dangerous delivery survived.
"Put to the blush." His vivid phrase: God's steady faithfulness ought to shame our chronic worrying and "forecasting" — our habit of managing the future ourselves.
Outward good as a lure. His governing image here: the good God gives us in visible things is bait, meant to draw us inward to "those essential and everlastingly abiding goods… won for us in Christ."

Cite this letter

Gerhard Tersteegen, Geistliche und erbauliche Briefe, Erster Band, I. Theil, Brief 110 (Solingen, 1773–75); trans. Jarred Fenlason, https://gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdi-thi-110.html.

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