A blessing-wish for the holy Christmas feast.

What this letter is. A Christmas letter, written late on the night of 27 December 1733 — "already 11 o'clock at night, and my head weak," on what Tersteegen calls "this great feast-day of the children" (the days after Christmas, when the Church remembers the Holy Innocents). He could not let the feast pass, he says, without "a few lines" to Christiana Griesenbeck. What comes out is one of the most tender things in the whole correspondence — a letter that does not so much describe the Christ-child as speak to Him.

Its argument. Tersteegen begins with the two great Christmas texts — the shepherds' "Let us go over to Bethlehem" (Luke 2) and John the Baptist's "Behold the Lamb of God" (John 1) — and then asks the child in the manger a startling question: how can this little Lamb "bear the sin of the world" and yet remain undefiled? His answer is the heart of the letter: because He is a child. "Thou art an innocent little Child, who takes upon Himself all sinners, but not their sins, and knows no sin." A child can carry others' burdens without being stained by them, because a child does not grasp — does not take the sin into itself. And that, says Tersteegen, is the way back for us too: "All sins neither defile nor harm us, when only we return again to this childhood." The road out of sin is not upward into mastery but downward into the trust and un-knowing of a child.

So the letter becomes a prayer to be made small again. "Bring us back to this happy Not-Knowing, Thou naked God-Child! so shall we find in Thee the lost Paradise again." (Adam and Eve in Eden "were naked, and were not ashamed" — before knowledge came in and spoiled everything.) Tersteegen even asks the infant Christ to tie him up with His own baby-things: "Thou hast swaddling-bands, which Thou Thyself needest no more: with Thy cross and Thy love wrap tightly together our senses, thoughts, and powers of mind… Bind us hand and foot… Go Thou on, until we lie bound, wholly work-less and will-less, in Thy bosom and manger!" — and then, unable to say more, he simply names the old carol every German knew, In dulci jubilo ("In sweet rejoicing"), and lets it finish the thought. A last blessing to his friend, and the shortest of signatures: "Your brother."

A few words and echoes.

• "Let us go over to Bethlehem." Luke 2:15 — the shepherds' words after the angels leave. Tersteegen makes their journey the reader's: come and see the child.
• "The Lamb of God, that beareth the sin of the world." John 1:29 — the Baptist's cry. The paradox Tersteegen unfolds — that the sin-bearer is Himself sinless — is 2 Corinthians 5:21: "he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin."
• "Return again to this childhood." The gospel of becoming small: "Except ye… become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew 18:3). For Tersteegen the child-state is the whole of holiness — trust without grasping.
• "When one was naked, and knew it not." Eden before the Fall: "they were both naked… and were not ashamed" (Genesis 2:25). The "happy Not-Knowing" is innocence restored — a knowing-nothing-but-God.
• "Thou Fulness of the Godhead in childhood." Colossians 2:9 — "in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." Tersteegen's wonder: the whole fulness of God, wrapped in swaddling-bands.
• "Thy swaddling-bands… bind us hand and foot." The manger-cloths of Luke 2:12, turned into an image of surrender: let the child's own weakness and love bind our restless powers still.
• "In dulci jubilo." A beloved 14th-century Christmas carol, half Latin, half German ("In sweet rejoicing, now sing and be glad"). Tersteegen breaks off his prose into its opening words, as if the feeling could only be sung.