Useful counsel to a friend regarding his business.
The Ninety-first Letter.
Useful counsel to a friend regarding his business.
Dear brother!
Your kind letter about D. I have duly received; I would have answered at once, but because I have been at work in a known matter on your behalf, it was left undone. ———
Otherwise, dear brother, I can easily imagine that you are now in a quite different school than before, in which new lessons and trials too will be set before you, such as you have not hitherto so experienced; but He who leads you in will also help you through and out. Only let our mind, in everything, remain wholly given over to the Lord, and our eye stay inwardly-single, fixed upon Him — then by degrees the whole body and all that is outward may become light and harmless.
To give up the business entirely I do not yet advise. — Could you either have a bookkeeper who kept only his set hours, coming to write in your house; or else a trusty, practiced warehouse-hand, that might give you some relief. To find a faithful brother for it (as you mention) would be a rare bird; for either he is not faithful to you, or, where he is faithful, he will hardly resolve to wade through the water with you, when he can lay the path dry-footed. If God should call me to it, I would gladly help pack up and be your servant. But be that as it may; you may be able to find such a bookkeeper or not — so I do not see why you should plague yourself so with these vain, temporal things, to the burdening, if not indeed the harm, of your mind, if only some door were opened to become free of it. To give the matter up entirely I do not yet advise; but this I would only ask: might it not be fitting, by laying aside this or that, or otherwise, to let your business go gently, and to diminish it? If so, then I would above all things advise that, and then to wait further, and to await what the morrow will bring.
For the rest, may God give you grace to do everything you do unto Him, in a childlike love-obedience, and to the mortification of your nature and self-propriety. Ah, that it might be so with you in everything, as if Jesus the Lord were in your house and heart; as if the business concerned Him, and you did His work only as His warehouse-hand! How orderly, quietly, and detachedly could everything then be carried out! Steal from the world now and then a little devotion and a moment's time, even when it thinks you are in the midst of it, and converse with your Lord; for He is present also in your counting-corner, and will gladly keep you company and lend you help there, wherever you but purely mean and seek Him; He wills to be a witness of your doings, and expects that you should also there, and everywhere, adore, love, and praise Him in your spirit, and bring Him your offerings, as if you were a hermit. See, brother! you have a lively temperament, which cannot well be wholly and unbrokenly still; well then, work — but before God, and in due measure and order! Through prayer and dying, the inner man will by degrees be separated from the outer, so as to be able to remain gently and quietly, without any pleasant feeling, by the Lord — which mercy inwardly wishes you, and begs of the Lord,
Your
Mülheim, 16 December 1735. — weak, true-minded brother.
German
Der 91te Brief.
Nützlicher Rath an einen Freund wegen seiner Handlung.
Lieber Bruder!
Dein Angenehmes über D. habe richtig bekommen; hätte so fort geantwortet, weil aber in bewußter Sache für dich etwas wirksam gewesen bin, ist solches hinterblieben.
— 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. A rare and delightful thing in the Tersteegen corpus: a letter of concrete, worldly-wise counsel to a businessman. A brother in trade has evidently written asking whether, now that his heart has turned inward, he ought to abandon his business (Handlung) altogether. Tersteegen — often caricatured as a world-fleeing quietist — answers with patience and shrewd common sense: "To give up the business entirely I do not yet advise." He talks bookkeepers and warehouse-hands, warns that a faithful business-partner is "a rare bird," and counsels not a dramatic renunciation but a gentle winding-down: "let your business go gently, and… diminish it… and then await what the morrow will bring." Grace, for Tersteegen, does not require a man to wreck his livelihood overnight.
But the letter's spiritual center is its teaching on how to carry a secular calling God-ward — essentially Brother Lawrence's "practice of the presence of God" applied to a merchant's counting-house. Do your work "unto Him… as if Jesus the Lord were in your house and heart; as if the business concerned Him, and you did His work only as His warehouse-hand." Between transactions, "steal from the world now and then a little devotion and a moment's time… and converse with your Lord; for He is present also in your counting-corner." The goal is a soul that adores and praises God in the middle of commerce "as if you were a hermit." And because Tersteegen knows the man's "lively temperament," he does not prescribe an impossible stillness but sanctified activity: "work — but before God, and in due measure and order." The slow separation of "the inner man from the outer" comes not by fleeing work but "through prayer and dying" within it.
A few words and echoes.
- "Our eye… inwardly-single… then the whole body may become light." Matthew 6:22–23, "if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light" — the single (undivided) eye of the heart fixed on God makes even outward life "light and harmless."
- "A rare bird." A proverb straight from classical Latin — rara avis (Juvenal, Satires 6.165), "a rare bird upon the earth" — for the trustworthy business-partner who is almost impossible to find.
- "Wade through the water with you… when he can lay the path dry-footed." A homely image: the truly faithful helper would step into the mud of your troubles with you, rather than keeping to the easy dry road — perhaps with a distant echo of Isaiah 43:2, "when thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee."
- "Do everything you do unto Him… as His warehouse-hand." Colossians 3:23–24, "whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men… for ye serve the Lord Christ"; Ephesians 6:7. The merchant is to regard himself as merely Christ's clerk, minding His shop.
- "He is present also in your counting-corner." The Winckel is the little corner or booth where a tradesman keeps his books — Tersteegen's point being that no place is too commercial or too small for God's presence. This is the Herrnhaag/Mülheim version of Brother Lawrence's kitchen.
- "To the mortification of your nature and self-propriety." Romans 8:13, "if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live"; Colossians 3:5.
- "The inner man… separated from the outer." 2 Corinthians 4:16, "though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day"; the slow inward/outward sorting that prayer and self-death accomplish.
- "Work — but before God." Note the emphatic capitals: in the 1773 print this one God stands in full letter-spaced capitals (Versalien), lifting the word out of the sentence — see the note on the type below.
trans. Jarred Fenlason · gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdi-thii-091 · all rights reservedEnglish translation © Jarred Fenlason · All rights reserved · gerhardtersteegen.com.