The loftiness and excellency of the child-state.
The Hundred and Twentieth Letter.
The loftiness and excellency of the child-state.
Beloved sister in Him who became our Brother!
Your last letter, which truly gladdened me, is answered not outwardly but inwardly; not with letters printed upon paper, but with sighs of the heart and wishes before God I have sought, so far as in me lies, to press into your heart such an answer as alone can satisfy your hunger — namely, the little Child Jesus, in whose form your soul, out of God's mercy, is enamored. I hope you will have so well contemplated Him, the little Child in the manger, in these past holy-days, that the divine virtues of His childhood may have been graven and born into the ground of your soul more deeply than has ever yet happened. God grant only that no [distracting] objects, from without or from within, may have power to carry this dearest and fairest Object — which the angels themselves long to look upon — out of our sight!
Let our poor, ruined, defiled soul be the stable which He will dignify by His coming, and by that very thing hallow; let our soul's-ground — that is, our inmost love — be the manger, wherein the little Child so gladly will rest, and alone shall rest. O, how sweet and wholesome it is, now and then to let go all other occupations and objects, and to descend into this still, hidden cave, where one finds only the little Child Jesus and His child-life, and where one does nothing but gaze at Him in stillness, adore, bow oneself, embrace Him gently, love, and let oneself be loved — or, to say it briefly, becomes a little child!
Ah, how utterly then falls away all the folly of the world — all that is called great, high, precious, and clever! So it goes. Great things had been prophesied of the great Messiah a thousand years back; what comes of it at last? Answer: a poor little Child is born in the most wretched circumstances, in a mean, forgotten place — and there you have the long-awaited Redeemer. Even so it still goes. The whole of salvation, and the fulfillment of all that whereof men have for so many years heard, spoken, read, and for which they have so long yearned, is found at last so unremarkable in the simple, inward child-state; into which may our little Jesus also essentially lead you, beloved sister, and keep you therein together with me, poor as I am, who also desire to know nothing but Jesus in the manger, since I have the Crucified already with me: in Him I desire to greet you heartily, and remain
Your weak brother.
Mülheim, the 31st of December 1731.
German
Der hundertundzwanzigste Brief.
Hoheit und Vortrefflichkeit des Kinder-Standes.
Geliebte Schwester in dem, der unser Bruder worden!
Dein Letzteres, welches mich recht vergnügte, ist nicht äußerlich beantwortet, sondern innerlich; nicht mit Buchstaben aufs Papier gedrucket; sondern mit Herzens-Seufzern und Wünschen, vor GOtt hab ich getrachtet, dir, so viel in mir ist, eine solche Antwort ins Herz zu drücken, die deinen Hunger allein vergnügen kann …
— 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 Christmas letter — written on New Year's Eve 1731, just after the holy-days — to Christiana Maria Griesenbeck, and one of the loveliest things Tersteegen ever set down on the meaning of the Nativity for the inner life. Her last letter, he tells her, he has answered not on paper but "with sighs of the heart before God," trying to press into her soul the one thing that can satisfy its hunger: the little Child Jesus in the manger. The whole letter is built on that image. Let our "poor, ruined, defiled soul" be the very stable that Christ dignifies by coming to be born in it; let our inmost love be the manger where "the little Child so gladly will rest, and alone shall rest." And the invitation is to go there often — "to descend into this still, hidden cave" and simply "gaze at Him, adore, bow, embrace Him gently, love, and let oneself be loved," until — his tender summary — one "becomes a little child" oneself.
From the crib Tersteegen draws the great Christmas reversal. Everything the world calls "great, high, precious, and clever" simply "falls away" before this. For a thousand years the Messiah was prophesied in glory — "and what comes of it at last? A poor little Child, born in the most wretched circumstances, in a mean, forgotten place — and there you have the long-awaited Redeemer." And it is still so, he says: the whole of salvation, everything people have "heard, spoken, read, and so long yearned for," turns out to be "found so unremarkable in the simple, inward child-state." That "child-state" (Kinderstand) is the letter's real subject — the loftiness, paradoxically, of becoming small: trusting, undefended, poor, resting in God as a child rests. He closes as one who wants "to know nothing but Jesus in the manger, since I have the Crucified already with me" — binding the crib and the cross together in a single glance.
A few words and echoes.
- The child-state (Kinderstand). The heart of the letter — the "loftiness and excellency" of spiritual childhood: to become small, trusting, and poor, and so to receive everything. Cf. "Except ye … become as little children" (Matthew 18:3).
- "Object" (Vorwurf). An old sense: not "reproach" but the object of contemplation. The Christ-child is "this dearest and fairest Object … which the angels themselves long to look upon"; the prayer is that no lesser "objects" crowd Him "out of our sight."
- "His coming" (Zukunft). Here in its old meaning of advent/arrival — the soul is the stable Christ "dignifies by His coming."
- "Which the angels themselves long to look upon." 1 Peter 1:12 — the wonder of the Incarnation that even the angels bend to gaze into.
- "There you have the long-awaited Redeemer." The Christmas paradox (Luke 2; Isaiah 9:6) — the thousand-year-prophesied Messiah arriving as a poor infant in a forgotten place.
- "The folly of the world … all that is called great, high, precious, and clever." 1 Corinthians 1:20 — God making foolish the wisdom of the world; the crib overturns every worldly scale of value.
- "To know nothing but Jesus in the manger … the Crucified already with me." 1 Corinthians 2:2 ("save Jesus Christ, and him crucified") — Tersteegen folds the manger and the cross into one, the whole of what he cares to know.
trans. Jarred Fenlason · gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdi-thi-120 · all rights reservedEnglish translation © Jarred Fenlason · All rights reserved · gerhardtersteegen.com.