How one is to conduct oneself in inquiry, reading, and dealings with friends. The main thing is praying, self-denial, suffering, and loving.

The Fourth Letter.

How one is to conduct oneself in inquiry, reading, and dealings with friends. The main thing is praying, self-denial, suffering, and loving.

In the grace of Jesus, dearly beloved brother!

That I am so slow in answering your ever-welcome little letters might, indeed, wear the look of unlovingness or of slighting you: yet I assure you, it is anything but that in my heart. I love you; your advancement lies close to me, and I have often been moved to offer you up, simply, to the chief Overseer and Shepherd of our souls, since I know a little how it goes and stands with you.

That you, as you report, have this summer been exercised by many temptations and confusions, I readily believe. Without trials and exercises we do not come to the goal: to be sure, much comes of our own fault; but God's boundless goodness in Christ bears with us, helps us, and takes us in again with wonderful and adorable long-suffering. Praised be this kindly God in Christ, who has helped even us thus far! Let us love Him! We might indeed sometimes have it better and nearer, if we would but keep to the simplicity of the heart, and not, out of a good intention, grow too soon great and clever; for then it falls hard afterward to begin again from the ABC, once one has spent much time and noble strength in vain. The intention is quite good: one would gladly get forward in one's Christianity, and in this good intention one inquires, reads, hears, and sees all manner of things — which, however, we cannot yet all grasp, harmonize together, and digest; so that it must needs cause the God-hungering mind many a confusion and pressure. I know what I have had to go through in this matter; and my soul thanks, even to this hour, the dearest God, that He preserved me in my first years from all sorts of acquaintances and occasions of hearing and seeing so many things.

Therefore it does not surprise me either, that dealings and conversation with friends have here and there brought you no satisfaction. I can still very well call to mind what I felt about it, when I first heard of it from you, and why I would give you no occasion for dealings with these or those, notwithstanding I noticed that you had indeed an inclination to it. I believed that you could walk more quietly and safely without such dealings, and that the divine Providence would send you acquaintance in due time, according as it were needful. And so, too, I have not been so glad to see it, when you have sought out for yourself many and all manner of kinds of spiritual books: not at all as though I had anything against such books or friends — only, not everything that is good in itself is therefore also good for us. Many a truth, even a precious one, can confuse or hold us up, when we would know it before the time. (John 16:12.) Therefore it is my way to leave souls very much to the free leading of grace, and to lead them to nothing but that whereon I mark that God wills to lead them, according to my testing. I only look on with God, and put in mind, where they might light on something harmful. I have dealings with souls who seek to walk heartily and inwardly before God, to whom I have never said a word of books that I have had printed myself, because I do not judge it profitable for them. God must everywhere be Master, and we His pupils, who keep nicely to the lesson set them.

We know indeed how His eternal love has sought us, and met us inwardly in Christ. In our heart's-ground we find now a deep, secret hungering and inclining, to be redeemed from sin, world, and self-propriety, and to be united again with our Origin. To reach this goal we must not turn ourselves out, here and there, to make great arrangements, or think to push it through by our own strength. Earnestness, to be sure, is needful — but in dying, in abiding-within, and in patient endurance. The power is quite near to us. We only stay within, at this secret inclination, and give it room; there, there, at this inclination in our heart's-ground, there is God's power and our sweetest Saviour present, from whom alone we have our help and salvation to expect. With humility and trust we cleave childlike to Him, believing in this His kindly nearness; Him, the Present One, we adore, we love, we give ourselves over to Him wholly, and deal, in a word, so with Him as with our God and best Friend, in whom we have enough. If we do so now, and He marks that it is only for this that we are concerned — that we would gladly please Him to the very best — then He helps us, and works essential virtue and a thousand good things in us, according as it is needful for us; there He teaches us, out of love to Him, to love the cross, to die off to self-seeking, and to renounce all foreign life and foreign inclinations, only that all may be purely turned toward Him, and He alone be our life and treasure.

In short! whoever exercises himself only in this main thing, as a simple child, without looking much about him, for such a one the Lord cares wonderfully: is it needful for him, then He sends him a book, or a faithful friend, for strengthening and encouragement. And since he would gladly remain an unknowing child, he is, by just such a form, made fit for the Spirit of Jesus to lead him at pleasure into all truth, and to make of him what He will.

You will therefore grasp this, dear brother: that I do not by any means advise wholly against dealings with friends, or against books; still less that I would look on anything as suspect or contemptible whereby a soul might get nourishment in the main thing — that would be a spiritual pride. I warn only against the excess, against the turning-outward, and against wanting to know, judge, and enter into dealings and notions of everything so, without discernment and testing. But this testing is quite simple: what strengthens us, namely, in the main thing; what enters the mind without constraint; and what quiets us at the time of inward retirement and prayer — that is good for us, the other not. Yet we are not therefore to reject the other, but to let it lie. What is that to thee? says Jesus still; follow thou me. In the matter of dealings my counsel stands: friendship with all the good, but communion with few. And if the divine Providence gives us such few as we have found tried and true, then may such be so much the dearer and worthier to us, the rarer such are to be found in these days — though we make no idols of them.

Walk simply; walk comforted, dear brother! and let us stay by the main thing: praying, self-denial, suffering, and loving. Grow not afraid before your unwilling distractions; to bear such and other things with displeasure and trust is the way to redemption. There is much wretchedness in us; both its uncovering and its redemption are grace. True devotion, recollection, and all good we must rather let God work in us, than want to make ourselves. Yet you must not be too scrupulous in your devotional exercises. Good children do their things as well as they can, and would gladly do them better every day. Let childlike love govern you in all. A single straw taken up with an intention of love is worth more before God than moving mountains without such intention. May the dearest Saviour Himself work in us all that is pleasing before Him. He is faithful; He will do it. Pray for me; I do the like, in weakness. — I remain, through grace,

Your

weak and obliged fellow-brother.

German

Der vierte Brief.

Wie man sich im Forschen, Lesen und Umgang mit Freunden zu verhalten. Die Hauptsache sey Beten, Verläugnen, Leiden und Lieben.

In der Gnade JEsu herzlich-geliebter Bruder!

Daß ich so träg bin in Beantwortung deiner mir jedesmal angenehmen Brieflein, könnte zwar das Ansehen einer Lieblosigkeit, oder Geringachtung haben: Allein ich versichere, es ist nichts weniger in meinem Herzen.

— 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).