To the same person; she is assured anew that her sufferings are a leading of God over her.

The Forty-first Letter.

To the same person; she is assured anew that her sufferings are a leading of God over her.

Jesus, the Crucified and Exalted, bless you!

In the same, much-beloved sister!

Your letter I have read with devotion, and laid your state of mind before God's countenance, and once more examined it. Certainly! it sounds quite troubled, what you write of yourself. Poor nature might well grow melancholy to read such a thing — to say nothing of feeling it, and feeling it for so long a time. But the eye of faith has a far other light than reason and nature: it sees just as great — if not greater — glory in Jesus, when He hangs mocked, stripped, forsaken of all, and in the very greatest sufferings on the abominable wood of the cross on Mount Calvary, as when He stands transfigured on Mount Tabor. And just so it is with all His true members and followers.

To answer everything you report of your condition would be too long, and also, as it seems to me, unnecessary. In general I say only this: that the more you disclose your condition to me, the more I am confirmed in it, that all these very painful sufferings are certainly a leading of God over your soul — to uncover the deep corruption of your heart, and to bring the most hidden self-life into death. In the relish and in the sweetnesses we do not know ourselves; the cross must uncover what we are. The subtle unbrokenness of the will; the trust in our own ability and working; the self-complacency in our virtues and other graces that the Lord gives us — ah! how deep and fast these and the like peculiarities sit at our heart! In the beginning, indeed, the Lord as it were overlooks many such impurities in His weak children; but when He sees that it is time, and the soul is, as it were, resolved enough, and confirmed through His grace and knowledge, then He begins to press the matter right out of the wound, and touches the poor soul just where it hurts her. And then she must often be assailed with quite hard and gross temptations and sins, so that thereby at the same time the still-hidden and subtle peculiarities may be uncovered and thoroughly put to death in her.

No wonder it is, dear sister, that everything in you stands quite dismayed at this so strange and unaccustomed dealing, when, instead of the so earnestly longed-for purity of heart, you become aware of nothing but filth and loathsomeness on you and in you. Ah! you cannot at all reconcile yourself to seeing yourself so wretched on every side. You would gladly be quite holy and pure, and so you must see and feel just the opposite in yourself. Come! only be content in your misery, and shut your eyes. God will indeed sanctify you too, but your holiness you shall not see, lest you exalt yourself.

There is still something hidden in you that wants to help itself and seeks ways out, often without your knowing; but when you then see everything wretched, powerless, desperate, and shut up on every side, there stirs either a violent passion of unresignedness and vexation, or else deep sorrow and melancholy — both of which bring only harm and pain. Indeed I know well that it also sometimes happens that your whole misery and suffering, with all its vexations and dangerous-seeming circumstances, its unbearableness and long duration, comes before your eyes as it were all at once, in the most acute and vivid way; whereby then the distress and anguish swells to the highest degree, so that it seems one can bear it no longer. This, then, is something that comes from the Lord, and toward which the soul must therefore bear itself passively. Yea, when the suffering is thus at its greatest violence, and the poor soul stands in the strait, even then can the very noblest and most thorough giving-over of oneself be practised — namely, when the soul, even then, in the deepest resignation, sinks itself in death, and gives itself up forever into the free good-pleasure of God; which is precisely the way to rest — namely, when we forsake our own selves and give ourselves over to God, who is the only rest of our spirit.

He Himself, the Lord, the faithful Leader of your soul, will surely find a way to lead you out of yourself into Himself: through death into eternal life; through the strait into an immeasurable breadth; out of the wretched prison into the most blessed freedom of spirit. Only let the Lord do it; He will carry out His work well enough. Let the enemies too do their worst, and heed not their raging; without God's permission they can do you nothing. The whole power of hell cannot force you to consent to a single sin. Let all temptations and sins lie so near you and surround you as much as they will; so long as you remain in death, in passivity and surrender, so long you can walk unhurt in the midst of the flames. I do indeed believe and know that you commit many a fault — especially those that you do not become aware of until they are already done; but do not disquiet yourself too much over it. What does a dead man care whether he is thrown into the mire? You do not want to sin; but if it should nevertheless happen, or if you think it has happened, then recall it, and give yourself over to God anew. I believe that almost all the faults in this state spring from this, when one goes out of surrender.

God now and then gives you the grace to be able to give yourself thoroughly over to Him; and although it is only with alternations and for a short time, yet the mind already feels that it is the better for it: a proof that you can be helped by this way alone. There, where we cease to work and to be anxious, there God begins, and in our Nothing He wills to be All. May He Himself work this blessed death fully in you and in me, and grant that we may so lose ourselves in Him that we never find ourselves again in ourselves!

Yea, only regard yourself constantly (as you write) as a sacrificial victim of the righteousness and love of God, which slays and consumes all self-life in you with the utmost severity. Poor Abraham, indeed, thinks his dearest Isaac must really go for it, and in that he had to consent too; but God willed only to have Isaac offered, and the ram burnt. So the Lord too will know well how to preserve His own in you; yet all must be offered up — goods, blood, body and soul, all gladness, relish, gifts, virtues, and the dear little image of holiness itself.

I say: you are a sacrificial victim of the righteousness and love of God, but not of His wrath; that will not come upon you, as you report several times. God's wrath touches, properly, only the godless; but His righteousness, mingled with love, purifies His children too. No, no, the dear Father is not angry with His poor helpless little children, who can neither stir nor move themselves. We are thus described in the prophet Ezekiel 16:5 and 6. Look up these verses once, and see whether that is called being angry.

Compose your soul, then, in the utmost possible patience! The bitter cup of suffering will soon be drunk out. You please God when you suffer for His sake. Is that ground not strong enough to strengthen you in patience? Meanwhile I thank the Lord from my whole heart that He has called you and counted you worthy to be taken so closely into His discipline, in order to perfect you, through suffering, in true sanctification. Yea, I thank Him too, with inward gladness, for all the grace He shows you in this state: that in the midst of all sufferings and temptations you nevertheless hate sin and love holiness; that you will not withdraw yourself from the cross according to the inmost ground; that you love His good-pleasure, praise His goodness, and that you at last set your highest comfort in this — that God alone may be loved and glorified in you and in others, even though, as you write, all your drops of blood should be consumed. If this longing is truly in you, as you express it, and as I do believe of you, then thank the Lord for it with me, and believe freely that flesh and blood have not given you this. Yea, God is already glorified in you even now, when you yourself are brought to nought; and He will glorify Himself in you yet more hereafter, in time and eternity.

Herewith, then, I will now close, and give you over into the faithful hands of the Lord. What else there might be to say to you has already been done in my former letter. For the rest, in this state one cannot well give many rules, nor keep them. And although I do at times give some particular instructions, yet you must not bind yourself to them with anxiety, nor think of them with much deliberation. God will Himself remind of and work all that is pleasing before Him, from moment to moment. He will not forsake you, you comfortless child, even if all the world should forsake you.

As for myself, I am indeed obliged and inclined enough to serve you, how and where I can, according to the ability that God supplies — just as one child gives another its hand. But because God's grace and light, in respect of the inward ways, is less in me than you and others think, I will not readily counsel anyone to follow my words further than he himself believes that it will also be the will of God and profitable to him. God will give us grace that we remember one another.

Only be of good cheer, my sister! and love Jesus and His cross, in which I am

Your

Mülheim, 23 November 1728.

devoted fellow-combatant and brother.

German

Der 41te Brief.

An dieselbe Person; sie wird aufs neue versichert, daß ihre Leiden eine Führung GOttes über sie seyen.

JEsus, der Gekreuzigte und Erhöhete, segne dich!

In demselben vielgeliebte Schwester! Dein Schreiben habe mit Andacht gelesen, und deinen Gemüths-Zustand vor GOttes Angesicht dargelegt, und abermals geprüfet.

— 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).