How one may be rid of the register of one's wretchednesses, need, and sins.
The Hundred and Forty-sixth Letter.
How one may be rid of the register of one's wretchednesses, need, and sins.
Peace be with you in JEsus' name!
In the same, beloved friend and sister!
It is always dear to me to hear something of the state of your mind, because I gladly take part in your sufferings and joys, and seek your soul's welfare and peace in God, though in weakness.
If it can ease you, then I will accept it, too, with willing patience and fellow-suffering, whenever you send me whole registers of your wretchednesses, need, and sins; would that you might but once dispatch them rightly away, and take no more heed of them yourself, and look upon them no otherwise than a letter that one has sealed and delivered: and for this you would have every ground and reason; for see, then, how I deal with letters of that kind.
I do not at all understand the business of justifying, either myself or others, in the divine court: I do not even undertake to examine such vexatious cases closely, and to unravel them. But JEsus I know as my most proven Advocate; to Him I may, without fear, entrust the most desperate cases, without the least worry of a bad outcome. I therefore take your letters, complaints, petitions, and the whole state of your case, and hand it all over to Him, the Faithful One, with the request that He carry the matter through, according to His wisdom and goodness.
What do you think? Would He well refuse it us? By no means! For that we have come to know Him far too well: to Him, then, we are to lay it out, and thereupon rest — not, however, forever take the matter back into examination ourselves, and go grubbing in the old, prejudicial records; nay, nor accept any complaint or demand that would disturb the mind, and let it lie with us, but only bring it all at once and sealed to our Advocate, the dearest little Child JEsus, as a matter that is out of our hands.
As for me: you may say and write to me what you will, I am without worry on your account, yet not without fellow-suffering. I will never believe it of you, that your mind's will should knowingly enter into any sin: on the contrary, this is the whole cause of all your sufferings — that your mind sees and feels much in itself that is contrary to JEsus, and that it cannot love Him so inwardly and childlike as it would like. A painful, but blessed-making suffering.
JEsus sees the deep ground of your meaning, which He Himself has wrought, and which, through His nearness, He holds unshaken amid all the storm-winds: ah, that you too, in a still, will-less mind, might but remain near Him just there, in the dark faith, without taking so much to heart what may go on in and with the body of this death — all of which shall do you no harm, but rather further you the more, and drive you inward.
JEsus has shown you so many graces (for which we will thank Him unto eternity) — were it only in this, that He has given you so inward a light and love toward His child-form; and yet you can still bear yourself so unruly in more than one point, when He would help you to what you see and love. Yes, He wills, and He will help you to it — but not without suffering, nay, strange suffering. Is any suffering, then, too long and too hard, out of which the innocent, sweet JEsus-life is to be born? He will strengthen you, and guard you from sins; only remain, as far as possible, bare and given over to His hand. Avoid all violent surgings of your emotions in every point: thereby you commit the most faults, even while you mean to do well. The best and holiest desires must end themselves in a peaceful, inward serenity toward God; it must not be so much a breathing-out as a breathing-in, or a gentle inclining toward the Lord in the ground.
As often as you go out of this blind and gentle abandonment, and out of this ground, through fear, vehemence, or looking upon yourself, so often will you be seized and shaken by the law: but one must suffer this and all the rest through only as quietly as possible, until one can sink again, unawares, into grace — into the gracious JEsus-name, as into the love of God unveiling itself within us: for there is no other name given to us men, wherein we shall be saved; into that same name I sink myself with you, and wish, sunk therein, to remain forever — I who am
Your brother and fellow-sufferer in the Lord.
Mülheim, the 25th of March 1734.
P.S. If I might make the request, I would ask that in your letters you not use the word Führer ["leader / guide"]. You may of course believe for yourself whatever you will: I have my reasons in it. I will not forget you before God, though I had nearly forgotten to assure you of it.
German
Der hundertundsechsundvierzigste Brief.
Wie man des Registers seiner Elenden, Noth und Sünden los werden könne.
Friede mit dir in JEsus Namen!
In demselben geliebte Freundin und Schwester!
Es ist mir allezeit lieb, etwas von deinem Gemüths-Zustand zu vernehmen, weil ich gern Theil nehme an deinen Leiden und Freuden, und deiner Seele Heil und Frieden in GOtt suche, obwohl in Schwachheit.
— 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 of spiritual direction, written 25 March 1734 to Christiana Griesenbeck, and one of the most sustained pieces of imagery in the whole correspondence: from first line to last it is built on a single legal conceit. The soul's sins and troubles are a "register" — a bundle of legal papers, "letters, complaints, and petitions" — and the entire counsel is about what to do with that dossier. Tersteegen's answer is disarmingly simple: stop litigating your own case. Seal it, deliver it, and hand it to your "Advocate."
Its argument. Griesenbeck evidently sends him long, anxious catalogues of her failings; his reply reframes the very pain as evidence of love — "this is the whole cause of all your sufferings, that your mind… cannot love Him so inwardly and childlike as it would like: a painful, but blessed-making suffering" — and reassures her that the desire itself is not hers to manufacture: "JEsus sees the deep ground of your meaning, which He Himself has wrought." So the remedy is to stop re-opening the case: lay it before Christ the Advocate and rest, breathe inward toward the Lord, and let the gracious Name be the one place the soul sinks.
A few words and echoes.
- "Register / letters, complaints, and petitions." Tersteegen writes in the vocabulary of an eighteenth-century lawsuit, and the translation keeps it rather than smoothing it into piety: a Register is the court-clerk's ledger of a case; Suppliquen are formal written petitions (Bittschriften); Acten are the case-files. The soul's sins are papers to be "sealed and delivered."
- "Advocate" (Advocat). Christ as the soul's retained counsel — the "most proven Advocate," to whom even "the most desperate cases" may be entrusted "without the least worry of a bad outcome." The one figure the whole letter turns on.
- "Lay it out to Him, and thereupon rest" (beruhen). The pivot of the letter, and a single word carries it. The 1773 reads beruhen — "to rest, to acquiesce" (Benrath glosses it "to give rest, to be at rest") — not the near-identical geruhen, "to deign," which would wreck the figure. Rest the case; do not keep "grubbing in the old, prejudicial records."
- "A painful, but blessed-making suffering." His diagnosis of her distress turned inside out: the pain she feels is her love of Christ, straining against everything in her that is still contrary to Him.
- "A gentle inclining toward the Lord in the ground." His favourite physiological image — the soul's motion toward God as a breathing-in, not a breathing-out. Here alone in the letter the print sets the divine name in full spaced capitals (H E R R N), which the small-caps Lord preserves.
- "There is no other name… wherein we shall be saved." Acts 4:12 — folded straight into the closing sentence about sinking into "the gracious JEsus-name."
- "Führer" (the postscript). A small, human window: he asks her, gently but firmly, not to use the word Führer ("leader / guide") in her letters — the word in view is Seelenführer, "spiritual guide." Tersteegen, wary of any cult of the director, will not be cast as her Führer.
trans. Jarred Fenlason · gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdi-thi-146 · all rights reservedEnglish translation © Jarred Fenlason · All rights reserved · gerhardtersteegen.com.