How far the love of our neighbor obliges us to serve him; and how one should conduct oneself at the discovery of our faults.
The Thirty-sixth Letter.
How far the love of our neighbor obliges us to serve him; and how one should conduct oneself at the discovery of our faults.
In our dear Saviour, Jesus Christ, beloved friend!
Your letter we duly received, and it was very welcome to me. I will answer it with what God gives me. As concerns your outward matter: it is indeed the truth that one must love one's neighbor as oneself; but it is by no means God's good pleasure that I should seek my neighbor's bodily welfare with harm to my own soul. For if this law of God were to be taken in so wide a sense, we should always find so much to serve and to attend to in the world that we should quite forget God and our own soul over it.
This, then, is my simple counsel and opinion: that if, as you write, someone else can be got who may help the people, you have then no need, for your weakness's sake, to leave the stillness and to put yourself into such danger. But if the people cannot by any means be helped otherwise, then you may well offer them, out of love, to be with them a few days, to help them out of their need — during which they can meanwhile look about for someone else to get; but that you should be there long, or even remain there always, this I altogether advise against. There is nothing that obliges you to it.
God's providence has led you out of the world, and one would therefore have to see the hand of God quite clearly in some thing before you should find freedom to go again into the unrest. Solitude, prayer, and the hidden walk with God in detachment from yourself and from all creatures — this is what God has called you to; keep such a call always before your eyes, until you essentially attain to it.
That God gives you to see the hidden hypocrisy and dissemblings of your heart — this is a great grace, for which I thank Him from the bottom of my heart. True heart-sincerity is a very weighty and necessary ground of all holiness. Only you must beware of becoming too downcast or disquieted over it, when you notice such impurities in yourself; but rather, with a childlike, loving, and humble turning to God in your heart, confess such misery to the Lord without too great an agitation, and then lay your heart's ground bare, in all simplicity, before God's all-seeing light, and keep it laid bare a while, in the utmost possible stillness, waiting for God to show the hidden impurities, and also to take them away. This simple exercise will, under God's blessing, bring you great profit. But you must strive to keep yourself, both in this exercise and in your whole walk, very gently, childlike, heartily, and confidingly toward God.
Do just the same, too, when you become aware of any of your faults and impurities — be it some self-love, self-seeking, self-will, delight in the creature, or the stirrings of some passions; or when you have perhaps fallen into distraction. Only turn yourself away from them, always, with full will, humbly and gently, and back to God with confidence, in a sincere mind, never again to become unfaithful or to love any impurity; and even if it should happen so a thousand times in one day, then only do it again and again the same way, until at last you stand firmer and more unmoved. Hold God always for your Heart-Friend; love Him with your whole heart; let His presence and dealings with Him be your only joy, comfort, and pleasure on earth: He is better than all that the world can give. Our imperfections, when we rightly hate them and heartily long to be delivered from them, need not disturb this confiding friendship.
Finally, I ask that God would daily make the hearty and sincere desire to please Him, which He has given, mightier, purer, and more inward! So will you please Him indeed, and be made ready for His true union. This is what came into my thoughts, in haste, to answer you. God Himself would work all in us! — which, from the bottom of my heart, wishes
Your
Mülheim, 30 June 1727.
well-disposed friend in Christ.
German
Der 36te Brief.
Wie weit uns die Liebe des Nächsten verpflichtet, ihm zu dienen; und wie man sich bei Entdeckung unserer Fehler zu verhalten.
In unserem theuren Heilande, JEsu Christo, geliebte Freundin!
Dein Schreiben haben wir wohl erhalten, und ist mir selbiges gar angenehm gewesen. Ich will darauf antworten, was mir GOtt geben wird.
— 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. An early letter (30 June 1727), and a beautifully balanced piece of pastoral direction to a woman torn between serving others and keeping her contemplative "stillness." Tersteegen refuses both extremes. Love of neighbor is real and binding — "one must love one's neighbor as oneself" — but it does not require "seeking my neighbor's bodily welfare with harm to my own soul," or we would "quite forget God and our own soul." So: if another helper can be found, stay in your solitude; if not, give a few days, but do not let yourself be permanently absorbed — "nothing obliges you to it." The second half turns inward, to the handling of one's own faults, and here Tersteegen is at his gentlest and most practical. God's showing her "the hidden hypocrisy of her heart" is grace, not condemnation; the wrong response is to be "cast down." The right one is a small, repeatable movement: confess the fault "without too much agitation," "lay your heart bare before God's all-seeing light," and wait — and when you slip, simply "turn back to God, gently and humbly," "even a thousand times a day." The whole is held together by the image of God as "Heart-Friend," whom our imperfections, rightly hated, "need not disturb."
A few words and echoes.
- "love one's neighbor as oneself." Matthew 22:39 / Leviticus 19:18 — the "law of God" the friend feared she was breaking; Tersteegen re-reads it against self-neglect.
- "led you out of the world." John 15:19 / 17:15–16 — the calling to a hidden life; her solitude is providential, not to be lightly abandoned.
- "lay your heart bare before God's all-seeing light." Psalm 139:23–24 ("search me, O God, and know my heart") and Hebrews 4:13 ("all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him") — the confidence to be seen through, and healed.
- "a thousand times in one day." His characteristic remedy for the anxious: not fewer falls but a gentler, tireless return — the opposite of scrupulosity.
- "Heart-Friend" (Herzens-Freund). God as the intimate companion whom our faults, "rightly hated," cannot estrange.
- "God Himself would work all in us." An echo of Philippians 2:13 ("it is God which worketh in you"), breathed here as a closing wish.
trans. Jarred Fenlason · gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdi-thii-036 · all rights reservedEnglish translation © Jarred Fenlason · All rights reserved · gerhardtersteegen.com.