How one must value one's good resolutions neither too high nor too low. The not-being-able is in us, but the being-able is to be found in God.

The Nineteenth Letter.

How one must value one's good resolutions neither too high nor too low. The not-being-able is in us, but the being-able is to be found in God.

In the grace of Jesus, our most precious Saviour, dearly-beloved friend and brother!

Your letter of the 4th of August was right welcome to me, in view of your honest and renewed declaration that you will be wholly the Lord's. So many scruples about writing to me, and imparting it to me, you had really no need of. We are to be children among one another, and to go about it, as such, in simplicity; so we err the least. Upon the reluctant notions of reason the truly childlike mind must not look, in the ways of God, but let them — without lingering over them — vanish in the presence of the Lord. A child, meanwhile, is weak, careless, and often breaks or spoils a thing; the father punishes or chastens the child for it, but does not therefore drive it out of the house; it remains a child all the same; it is heartily grieved that it has offended the father; it promises amendment: this promise is childish enough, yet also childlike, and comes from the heart; the father sees that, and therefore it is pleasing to Him, though He well knows the weakness of His child.

See, dear brother, so it is roughly with our doing, and with our good intentions or promises, which we must value neither too high nor too low: we value them too high when we take an earnest resolve for the thing itself already, or as though we could now also keep and carry it out just so, as we have purposed it; we value them too low when we regard such things as arising out of ourselves, and, after one and another experience of our unfaithfulness and straying, then simply let everything lie, and give no more room to any good resolves and resolutions, under the specious pretext that we should not be able to keep them anyway. The not-being-able is in us, but the being-able is to be found in God, to which our not-being-able is meant to drive and bring us.

Every good disposition, resolve, desire, or thought is not our own offspring, but God's working in us, which we ought not to suppress or evade, but to receive with respect and to remain within. Nor must we think that God works the good in us only at a certain time, and then went away from us, and afterward left us sitting, so that we should now carry on by ourselves: by no means! In the very moment when we find in us a good disposition, desire, or resolve, and as long as we find such in us, there the Lord our God is inwardly near, working and upholding the same in us, as the true root of all good; He works in us the willing of the good, and heartily longs also to work in us the accomplishing of the good — but after His good pleasure, and not after our own head. Philippians 2:13. We are only, in all faithfulness, to stay nicely within, close to God, to give room to His workings, and to await ever-new strength, in that we keep clinging to the root — yes, even amid the experience of our own weaknesses and unfaithfulnesses, instead of growing disheartened, only to turn, bowed, within again, to seek the strength for renewal in the right place.

O my dear brother, God is surely, unspeakably near to us in the gracious name Jesus — to help us, to impart Himself to us, to love us, and to be loved and adored by us again; He is our whole salvation. Ah! let us then draw near to Him; He waits for us; He would gladly reach us His hand, with His drawings of love. Inwardly, inwardly is all to be sought and found that can thoroughly sanctify us and make us blessed, even in this life, more than can be uttered. Only, we must also give ourselves up wholly to the Lord, love prayer and inward retreat, and not shrink from the bitternesses of the cross. It is infinitely worth the trouble.

Before I had even received your letter, I had already written to N. N. what was needful for his warning and admonition. — Why do the children stumble, why do they fall so often? Because they do not hold the mother fast. Ah, let that be to us a lesson and a warning. I do not trust the greatest earnestness much, when prayer and self-denial are not loved and diligently practised. —

I greet you heartily, and remain, through grace,

Your

bound, weak brother.

German

Der neunzehnte Brief.

Wie man seine gute Fürsätze weder zu hoch, noch zu gering schätzen müsse. Das Nicht-Können ist in uns, das Können aber in GOtt zu finden.

In der Gnade JEsu, unsers theuresten Heilandes, vielgeliebter Freund und Bruder!

Deine Zuschrift vom 4. August ist mir recht angenehm gewesen, in Absicht auf deine redliche und erneurte Erklärung, ganz des HErrn zu wollen seyn.

— 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).