Letters · Erster Band · Theil I (1773)

A commendation of the way of love.

Bd I · Th I · Brief 148 · Der hundertundachtundvierzigste Brief

Addressee — An einen Freund — unnamed. A male friend, addressed in the courtesy third person ("daß ihme dieses Eingeschlossene… zugesandt," "und auch sonderlich seine Frau") and subscribed "Euer verbundener Freund und Mitpilger" — no intimate du. The letter is largely counsel for the friend's wife (referred to as Sie / ihr / sie in the 3rd person). Greets "N. und alle bekannte Freunde" at the close.
Date — 30 April 1734, from Mülheim.
Provenance — Translated from the public-domain 1773 first edition (Theil I, pp. 412–413), in normalized GS 1845 orthography, collated against the 1845 Gesammelte Schriften, Hartman's 1819 reprint. All public-domain.

The Hundred and Forty-eighth Letter.

A commendation of the way of love.

In the grace of the Lord, beloved friend!

An extraordinary flux upon head and eyes, coupled with a fever, has hindered me from sending you this enclosure sooner. I write this too in bed, wherefore I add only these few lines as a cover. —

I greet you heartily, and especially your wife too; I commend to her particularly the way of love; she will thereby alone be healed and furthered: let her take a good heart to God, and give herself wholly into His faithful hands; let her serve God and go to God, not through reasonings and ponderings, but through inward and confiding inclinations of the heart and of love; let her rejoice, when she has occasion, to do, or suffer, or deny something for the sake of such a God; let her love the God who loves her, even without her feeling the love; and to this ground and disposition of love and of trust let her ever return, as often as she is dislodged from it. Ah, let us love the Most-Loveworthy! I close with a hearty greeting to N. and all the friends I know.

Your bound friend and fellow-pilgrim.

Mülheim, the 30th of April 1734.

❦

German

Der hundertundachtundvierzigste Brief.

Anempfehlung des Weges der Liebe.

In der Gnade des HErrn geliebter Freund!

Ein außerordentlicher Fluß auf Haupt und Augen, so mit einem Fieber gepaaret gehet, hat mich verhindert, daß ihme dieses Eingeschlossene nicht eher zugesandt.

— 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. One of the shortest and most personal notes in the whole collection — a hasty cover-letter, written from bed, to an unnamed friend (Benrath records only "the addressee is unknown"), on 30 April 1734. Tersteegen has been laid up with "an extraordinary flux upon head and eyes, coupled with a fever" (an eighteenth-century catarrh), and sends only "these few lines as a cover" for an enclosure he had meant to forward sooner. The enclosure itself is lost — the print's editor cut it — but Benrath reasonably guesses it may have been a prescription or medicine for the friend's wife, which fits the whole drift of the note.

Its argument. For the note is, in effect, a spiritual prescription. Its heart is a cascade of tender counsels for the friend's wife, who seems to have been unwell in body and soul alike; and Tersteegen's single remedy is "the way of love" — "she will thereby alone be healed and furthered." Come to God not by strain but by affection, he says — "not through reasonings and ponderings, but through inward and confiding inclinations of the heart" — and above all, "let her love the God who loves her, even without feeling the love." The love, that is, does not wait on the feeling of love. The whole gathers into a single closing cry: "Ah, let us love the Most-Loveworthy!"

A few words and echoes.

"The way of love" (der Weg der Liebe). The apostle Paul's phrase: at the end of 1 Corinthians 12 he promises to show "a more excellent way," and unfolds it in chapter 13 as love. To commend someone to the way of love is to commend the whole of that chapter.
"Not through reasonings and ponderings, but through inward… inclinations of the heart." Tersteegen's lifelong counsel in one line — the soul comes to God by affection and trust, not by intellectual effort.
"Love the God who loves her, even without feeling the love." The core of the prescription: love is an act and a direction, not a felt emotion, and it holds even when all feeling is absent (cf. 1 John 4:19, "we love him, because he first loved us").
"Ah, let us love the Most-Loveworthy!" The note's closing exclamation — the entire "way of love" gathered into a cry.
"Your bound friend and fellow-pilgrim" (Mitpilger). How he signs himself — not a director over the household but a fellow-traveller on the same road.

Cite this letter

Gerhard Tersteegen, Geistliche und erbauliche Briefe, Erster Band, I. Theil, Brief 148 (Solingen, 1773–75); trans. Jarred Fenlason, https://gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdi-thi-148.html.

← Bd I · Th I · Brief 147 Bd I · Th I · Brief 149 →