Letters · Erster Band · Theil I (1773)

That the sufferings come first, and the joy and glory follow after.

Bd I · Th I · Brief 147 · Der hundertundsiebenundvierzigste Brief

Addressee — An Christiana Maria (Mechthild) Griesenbeck, née Engels (1707–1741) — the same correspondent as Briefe 120, 123–126, 129, 131, 133, 135–138, 141, 142, 145, and 146 (her seventeenth letter in this run). Salutation "In unserm theuren Immanuel geliebte Schwester!", with the intimate du throughout ("deinen vorigen… Brief," "willig Theil an deinen Leiden," "dein ersterer Brief," "da du ja abermals erkannt hast," "Laß dich mit JEsu creutzigen," "so bist du besser geschickt"). Subscription: "Dein schwacher verbundener Mitbruder in der Gnade JEsu." Addressee from van Andel 279.
Date — 25 April 1734, from Mülheim. ⭐ Easter Sunday — Easter 1734 fell on 25 April (the latest calendar date Easter can occupy; 1734 is one of the rare such years), which the Passion-to-Resurrection movement of the letter reflects.
Provenance — Translated from the public-domain 1773 first edition (Theil I, pp. 410–412), in normalized GS 1845 orthography, collated against the 1845 Gesammelte Schriften, Hartman's 1819 reprint. All public-domain.

The Hundred and Forty-seventh Letter.

That the sufferings come first, and the joy and glory follow after.

In our dear Immanuel, beloved sister!

Both your former and your yesterday's letter I have received well. I take part, according to the measure of grace that the Lord has laid upon me, willingly in your sufferings and in your joys.

The sufferings come first, and the joy and glory follow after; although the dear Father will reach His faint children their daily bread too, that they faint not on the way — this we may surely trust Him for. Yea, His goodness has often let us experience already that He stands behind the curtain, and looks through the lattice, when we suppose He takes no note of us; where sometimes a single glance of His gracious eyes has driven away invincible thick fogs of afflictions — whereof your earlier letter can bear witness, since you have once again come to know that the light not only comes forth out of the darkness, but that out of the greatest darkness and distress the purest and best lights are always born. JEsus Christ, yesterday and to-day, and the same also unto eternity.

The Saviour, who some days ago — nay, some thousands of years ago — said that He will so heartily gladly love us poor, naked, helpless orphan-children (Hos. 14:4–5 ff.), is unchangeably the same, however strangely things may go criss-cross, as they will: Him will we trust, and without any hesitation or looking-about, give over our soul and salvation into His hand.

Whoever cannot believe that God's ways are strange, contrary, and go through deep waters, that one need only have lived through the first Good Friday with the disciples, and then have had to guess whether JEsus or Satan had won? And whether those were ways to restore us, and our Prince, into the lost glory? What would we — and what will the disciples have thought? And yet, and yet, when all hope was out, then JEsus steps into the midst, and we cry to one another with joy: Jesus lives, from eternity to eternity! Be therefore only undismayed, dear sister! Let yourself be crucified, killed, and buried with JEsu; let every one cast earth upon you, and cover you over as in the mire! Only commit your spirit into the dear Father's hands; He will keep it whole and unharmed for Himself unto eternity, and at last break every bolt and seal, and let it rise again in the new and beautiful JEsus-life! Amen.

Remain, as far as possible, childlike, sunk into the gentle ground of the love of JEsu, however dry and dead it may be; so are you the better fitted, or in a state, to suffer and to endure, and also to work according to God's will. I hope not to forget you before God; I remain otherwise rather weak in the head, and otherwise too.

Your weak, bound fellow-brother in the grace of JEsu.

Mülheim, the 25th of April 1734.

❦

German

Der hundertundsiebenundvierzigste Brief.

Daß die Leiden zuerst kommen, und die Freude und Herrlichkeit hernach folgen.

In unserm theuren Immanuel geliebte Schwester!

So wohl deinen vorigen, als auch deinen gestrigen Brief habe wohl erhalten. Ich nehme nach dem Maß der Gnade, die der HErr beigelegt, willig Theil an deinen Leiden, und an deinen Freuden.

— 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 Easter consolation to Christiana Griesenbeck, dated 25 April 1734 — which in that year was Easter Sunday itself (1734 is one of the rare years when Easter falls on its latest possible date, 25 April). Everything in the letter turns on that fact. Its title is the whole shape of Christian hope — "the sufferings come first, and the joy and glory follow after" — and Tersteegen, answering two letters from her (a downcast one and a brighter one), walks her from Good Friday to Easter, the very movement the calendar was, that day, enacting.

Its argument. The tenderest note comes early: even in her darkness the Father is not absent but concealed — "He stands behind the curtain, and looks through the lattice, when we suppose He takes no note of us" — and the relief, when it comes, is sudden and unearned: "a single glance of His gracious eyes has driven away invincible thick fogs of afflictions." The heart of the letter is a Good-Friday thought-experiment: whoever doubts that "God's ways are strange… and go through deep waters" need only imagine standing with the disciples on "the first Good Friday," when it looked for all the world as though Satan, not JEsus, had won — "and yet, and yet, when all hope was out, then JEsus steps into the midst." From the Easter shout the counsel follows, and it is stark: accept your own Paschal triduum — "let yourself be crucified, killed, and buried with JEsu" — for the burial is the condition of the rising.

A few words and echoes.

"The sufferings come first, and the joy and glory follow after." The letter's title and its whole pattern — the Easter shape (cross, then glory) pressed onto the inner life (cf. Romans 8:18; Luke 24:26, "ought not Christ to have suffered… and to enter into his glory?").
"He stands behind the curtain, and looks through the lattice." The hidden, watching God — an echo of Song of Solomon 2:9, "he looketh forth at the windows, shewing himself through the lattice."
"Jesus lives, from eternity to eternity!" The Easter acclamation, and the letter's one typographic climax: the print sets Jesus here in full spaced capitals, which the small-caps Jesus preserves.
"Let yourself be crucified, killed, and buried with JEsu." The counsel to accept one's own death-and-burial with Christ in hope of rising with Him (cf. Romans 6:4).
"Commit your spirit into the dear Father's hands." The word from the cross, Luke 23:46 — here the ground of confidence that God "will… at last break every bolt and seal, and let it rise again."
"JEsus Christ, yesterday and to-day, and the same… unto eternity." Hebrews 13:8, quoted outright as the guarantee that the God who acted then acts now.
"He will so gladly love us poor… orphan-children." An echo of Hosea 14 (God's promise to "love them freely"), which the letter cites in passing as the pledge of the unchanging Saviour.

Cite this letter

Gerhard Tersteegen, Geistliche und erbauliche Briefe, Erster Band, I. Theil, Brief 147 (Solingen, 1773–75); trans. Jarred Fenlason, https://gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdi-thi-147.html.

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