The writer's love to the called, and his special love to the chosen.
The Forty-eighth Letter.
The writer's love to the called, and his special love to the chosen.
In Jesus, beloved brother!
My previous letter you will no doubt have received. To your latter one I could not answer until today. — Your remembrance is the dearer to me, the more needful I recognize and feel it, in truth, to be to me; as indeed the mercy of God also reminds me of you now and then. Ah, had I but so much grace as I sometimes, with this in view, wish for myself! It seems to me I would gladly pour it all out, from the heart, upon my fellow-brethren, so that they might only be kept, blessed, sanctified, and presented according to God's good pleasure. If the Lord has given me, out of grace, this love to all the called, I feel it yet incomparably more inwardly and powerfully toward the few chosen souls who have wholly dedicated themselves to the Lord Jesus and to His service in spirit and in truth. In these holy and glorious ones upon earth my soul has all its delight; and I have, in time past, not at all out of a poetic boastfulness, but out of the inmost feeling of my heart, sung:
O how I love, Lord, Thine own, who seek Thee, who mean Thee! O how precious are they to me!
I know not what a strange piece of work I am. I am myself so full of failings and miseries that it sometimes seems to me I am misery itself. Notwithstanding, the perfecting of such chosen souls lies so heavily on my heart that, if some among those who love me knew it, I think they would — in order to gladden and refresh me (if they did it not otherwise for God's sake) — in a moment turn away from all mediations between God and our soul, and, with closed eyes, wholly and forever give themselves up to the Lord alone.
Why I write this I do not really know, unless it be that I would thereby bring both you and myself to this reflection: that if poor, self-frail people, who have scarcely become partakers of the least little spark of the divine light and the divine love, so perceive the beauty and preciousness of the inward Christian life, and so ardently long for our faithfulness and sanctification — how much more glorious and important must our calling and election be in the eyes of the all-knowing God; and how motherly must this eternal Love not long and wait to seek again and gather us entangled and scattered children into His blessed bosom! Let us, then, do Him this pleasure, and forsake our own selves, that He may have us wholly and make us blessed eternally!
Ah, Lord! if we knew Thee as we ought, what motive would more move and urge our heart to the inmost sanctification, than to hear that Thou wouldst gladly have it, and that we should have this blessedness for fruit and reward — that we might thus please Thee forever, and gladden Thee! Make us, then, our very selves just such as Thine eyes gladly see us; and then rejoice and delight Thyself forever in us — that is, in Thine own, which Thou wilt have laid in us.
Mülheim, 13 November 1731.
German
Der 48te Brief.
Des Schreibers Liebe zu den Berufenen, und vorzügliche Liebe zu den Auserwählten.
In JEsu geliebter Bruder!
Mein Voriges wirst du ohne Zweifel bekommen haben. Auf dein letzteres habe nicht eher, als heute antworten können.
— 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. One of the most personal and affectionate letters in the collection — Tersteegen writing to a travelling friend (Fischer, then in Amsterdam) not to instruct him but to confess how he loves him, and souls like him. He distinguishes two loves: a real love for "all the called" — everyone drawn toward God — and an "incomparably more inward" love for "the few chosen souls" who have "wholly dedicated themselves to the Lord Jesus." Of these he says his "soul has all its delight," and he quotes a verse he had once sung "not out of poetic boastfulness, but from the inmost feeling of my heart": "O how I love, Lord, Thine own, who seek Thee." What keeps the letter from sentimentality is his unsparing honesty about himself — "I am myself so full of failings that it sometimes seems I am misery itself" — set against how heavily "the perfecting of such chosen souls" weighs on him. The argument then lifts: if he, a poor man with barely "a spark" of divine love, longs so for his friends' holiness, how much more must God value their "calling and election," and how "motherly" must the eternal Love long "to gather us scattered children into His blessed bosom." It ends, as so often, by turning from speech about God to speech to God — a prayer that He would make us "such as Thine eyes gladly see us," and "delight Thyself forever in us."
A few words and echoes.
- "The called" and "the chosen" (die Berufenen… die Auserwählten). The two circles of the letter — everyone summoned by grace, and the few who have fully answered. Behind them stands "your calling and election" (2 Peter 1:10, "give diligence to make your calling and election sure") and, more distantly, "many are called, but few are chosen" (Matthew 22:14) — though Tersteegen's "chosen" are marked not by decree but by self-surrender.
- "O how I love, Lord, Thine own." A sung verse — a hymn-line Tersteegen had made his own; its love for those "who seek Thee, who mean Thee" echoes the Psalmist's "I have loved the habitation of thy house" (Psalm 26:8) and "the Lord loveth the gates of Zion" (Psalm 87:2).
- "In spirit and in truth." John 4:23–24 — the mark of the "chosen souls" who worship "in spirit and in truth."
- "How motherly… to gather us scattered children." A striking maternal image for God — the eternal Love "longing and waiting" like a mother — with the Gospel picture of gathering the scattered (Luke 15; John 11:52, "gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad"), and Isaiah 66:13, "as one whom his mother comforteth."
- "I am misery itself." Tersteegen's habitual self-abasement — not despair but the ground from which he can speak of grace; the same note as Romans 7:24, "O wretched man that I am."
- "This pleasure" (Plaisir). A French loanword Tersteegen keeps for a gentle, almost playful effect: let us "do Him this pleasure" — give God the joy of having us wholly.
- No signature. The letter has no name-subscription: the closing prayer runs straight into the dateline. The prayer is the farewell.
trans. Jarred Fenlason · gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdi-thii-048 · all rights reservedEnglish translation © Jarred Fenlason · All rights reserved · gerhardtersteegen.com.