Jesus alone can still and fulfil the insatiable desire of the human heart.
The Eleventh Letter.
Jesus alone can still and fulfil the insatiable desire of the human heart.
High-born, most gracious Countess!
The undeserved favour and kindness with which my most gracious patrons, and Your High Comital Grace in particular, have honoured me since your stay here in this place, has indeed remained with me in grateful and unforgettable remembrance: but I would not have made bold to write to Your Grace, had not my most gracious Countess herself prompted me to it and granted leave.
The lowliness of the writer may then be made good by the loftiness of the matter of which he writes. Jesus, the Most High, and for our sakes the most lowly, is the worthiest object of our contemplation, and the one satisfying good of our heart, wherever He is otherwise known and enjoyed in truth. Once for all: the insatiable human heart may grasp, for its own amusement and quieting, at whatever it will; it stays poor amid all superfluity, so long as it has not Jesus; it may, in its present unrest, dream of nothing but future blessednesses, and wish to tickle itself with the greatest pleasures still to be hoped for — everything created is too scant and too frail to satisfy an eternal spirit; the hidden discontent, fear, and gnawing remain. And though the spirit should run to the end of the world, it will not escape this except on the one road: where, penitent, it runs to Jesus, and through heart-faith and prayer finds in His blood the forgiveness of its sins, and through His Spirit and grace the deliverance from the dominion of sins, and therewith a true communion with the ever-abiding Saviour. Could a world-loving heart see, but for one quarter-hour, the blessednesses that the poorest sinner would then meet with in and beside Jesus, it would need no driver or spur to quit all the temporal and deceiving delights of sin, and to cast itself with most willing heart into the arms of this Jesus, this Friend of sinners. And what shall it not become in eternity! The blind world thinks: "it is but fantasy and sweet dreams, with which wretched and low hearts have fed themselves; for noble minds such spiritual things are not fitting — they have weighty business, and substantial delights, with which they can otherwise make themselves a pleasant life." But it is the other way round: their most exalted and best things will, in the hour of death, appear as children's follies and deceiving fantasy, while Jesus and His eternal goods will come to them as the only substantial and solid things.
Most gracious Countess! I know Your Grace holds other thoughts, and will agree with me from the heart, that precisely those are to be esteemed the truly sensible, blessed, and truly noble spirits who — beholding things thus in the light of truth and in the mirror of eternity — despise the perishing glory of this world as a glittering misery, with true nobility of soul; or, as Paul says, count it for loss and dung against the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ, that they may win Christ, and be found, living and dying, in Him.
Ah, that such a Jesus is — and is yet so little sought, known, and enjoyed in truth! It lies truly not in His goodness; this blissful Light of life would impart itself mildly to all who do not hide themselves, even to the greatest sinners: He has come near enough to us, too, with His welling love of man; He stands at the door of our hearts, knocks, and seeks only, the sooner the dearer, to gain an entrance. Only — because we by nature stand in the darkness, and love the darkness, while He, as the Sun of Righteousness, uncovers our wrong for our own good — the unwise heart shrinks from this unwelcome and yet so blessed working of the healing grace, and turns, ah alas! away from it again. God's children are minded quite otherwise: they show the Physician their wounds, and bear the brief pain, that they may be thoroughly healed; and they find therein, ever more, that in Jesus, in His communion, in the childlike walk before His face, they find thorough contentment and eternal life.
Your High Comital Grace will overlook, with kindly eyes, the unlooked-for length of my writing. The matter can, for once, not be displeasing to you; nor do I know how to requite the grace and kindness shown me, unworthy, in any better way than by laying His High Comital Grace, my most gracious lord, and Your High Comital Grace, my most gracious Countess, and all the young lord- and ladyships, at the feet of my Jesus, together with myself, in weakness — and by wishing you all, from the heart, not only every blessed prosperity in outward things, but chiefly that the highly-transfigured Son of God may gloriously transfigure Himself in each and every soul of the High-Comital house, in His blessed knowledge, sweetest love, most delightful communion, and divine life; that so this high house may become ever more illustrious, and this true radiance abide before God for ever!
This is the most earnest petition of him who commends himself to the high grace of His most gracious Lordship, and who names himself, with most dutiful respect and confidence,
High-born, most gracious Countess, Your High Comital Grace's
faithful subject and weak intercessor.
German
Der elfte Brief.
JEsus allein kann die unersättliche Begierde des menschlichen Herzens stillen und erfüllen.
Hochgeborne, gnädigste Gräfin!
Die unverdiente Huld und Gewogenheit, womit meine gnädigste Herrschaften, und insbesondere Ew. Hoch-Gräfl.
— 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. The one letter in this part addressed to high nobility — a countess, and through her the whole comital household. Tersteegen, a lay weaver-preacher, writes with all the courtly formality the age required (the honorifics "Your High Comital Grace," the third-person deference), and then quietly turns the whole apparatus of rank toward one point: that the restless human heart, however richly furnished, can be filled by Jesus alone. It is a small masterpiece of speaking the truth up the social ladder without flattery and without cringing.
Its argument. The heart is "insatiable": "grasp at whatever it will, it stays poor amid all superfluity, so long as it has not Jesus." All created things are "too scant and too frail to satisfy an eternal spirit," and beneath every pleasure "the hidden discontent, fear, and gnawing remain." There is only one road out — "penitent, it runs to Jesus," and finds in His blood forgiveness and "a true communion with the ever-abiding Saviour." Against the "blind world's" scoff that all this is "but fantasy and sweet dreams," fit only for "wretched and low hearts," he sets the reversal of the deathbed: there "their most exalted and best things will appear as children's follies," and Jesus alone as "the only substantial and solid thing." This is Paul's own accounting — the world's glory "for loss and dung against the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ." Then the tenderness under the doctrine: Jesus "stands at the door of our hearts, and knocks"; He is the "Sun of Righteousness" who "uncovers our wrong for our own good," so that the healing hurts — and "God's children show the Physician their wounds, and bear the brief pain, that they may be thoroughly healed." He ends by laying the whole family "at the feet of my Jesus," with a courtly blessing built on a pun (see below).
A few words and echoes.
- "It stays poor amid all superfluity, so long as it has not Jesus… an eternal spirit." The ancient insight of Augustine's "our heart is restless until it rests in Thee" — here in Tersteegen's own words. Behind it, Psalm 107:9 ("he satisfieth the longing soul") and the thirst of Psalm 42.
- "For loss and dung… that they may win Christ, and be found in Him." Philippians 3:8–9, named ("as Paul says") — the world's glory weighed against "the surpassing knowledge of Jesus Christ."
- "He stands at the door of our hearts, knocks, and seeks… an entrance." Revelation 3:20 — "Behold, I stand at the door, and knock."
- "The Sun of Righteousness… uncovers our wrong for our own good." Malachi 4:2 ("the Sun of righteousness… with healing in his wings"), joined to John 3:19–20 (we "love the darkness" and shrink from the light that would heal).
- "They show the Physician their wounds, and bear the brief pain." The Great Physician of Matthew 9:12 / Luke 5:31 — the same medicine-and-wounds image as Brief 9, now applied to the honesty that lets grace cut.
- "That the Son of God may transfigure Himself… that this high house may become ever more illustrious." A deliberate pun on the family's title. Durchlaucht ("Serene Highness," literally "shining-through") is the honorific of high nobility; Tersteegen writes that the house may become ever more durchläuchtig — at once more Serene (the title) and more shone-through by God's radiance, so that "this true radiance abide before God for ever." The rank is granted only to be transfigured. (Cf. 2 Corinthians 3:18, "changed into the same image… from glory to glory.")
trans. Jarred Fenlason · gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdi-thii-011 · all rights reservedEnglish translation © Jarred Fenlason · All rights reserved · gerhardtersteegen.com.