How one is to conduct oneself under a prohibition against keeping company with the devout.

What this letter is. A pastoral letter to a woman whose devotion has run into a domestic wall: a man in authority over her — "he," almost certainly her husband — has forbidden her to keep company with the "devout" (Frommen) and, it seems, to pursue her spiritual practices. Under the strain she has let slip a sharp, resentful word, and now torments herself over it. Tersteegen writes to steady her, and the letter is a model of how he counsels the powerless: not defiance, but a gentleness that quietly keeps the one thing no prohibition can reach.

He opens with warmth — a New-Year renewal of the invisible fellowship of "the childlike-minded," a covenant "to share our little morsels, and bear love and sorrow in common." Then the core consolation: outward bans can shut off letters and visits, but "God, and the worship of God in the heart, no one can forbid us or take from us." Drawing directly on Psalm 27, he pictures her hidden "in His tabernacle in the evil time," still able to "behold the beauty of the Lord" inwardly. Toward her persecutors he asks not resentment but the hardest love: "we will, with God, love them nonetheless, however much they hate us, and plunge them, together with us, into the reconciling heart of love of our Jesus."

On her hasty word he is strikingly un-scrupulous for a spiritual director — "I wonder it has not already happened more often" — locating the fault as "more a sin against your neighbor than properly against God," and prescribing plain confession followed by submission: "yield, for this time… go nowhere against his will; this bowing will be a pleasing offering to God." This is Tersteegen's Gelassenheit applied to an unjust constraint: obey outwardly, keep the inner sanctuary, and let the enforced "bowing" itself become the sacrifice. Reproach will be her "daily food," but "eaten with free love" it turns wholesome — and through it all she is to guard "the childlike trust in the Child Jesus," refusing every anxious calculation that would rob her of it.

A few words and echoes.

• "The peace of our God-child fill your heart." The display benediction over the letter; Colossians 3:15, "let the peace of God rule in your hearts," and Philippians 4:7 — the peace of the newborn Christ ("God-child," GOtt-Kind) as a New-Year wish.
• "Share our little morsels, and bear love and sorrow in common." Galatians 6:2, "bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ"; the fellowship of Acts 2:44–46. The Bröcklein ("little crumbs") is a homely image of spiritual sharing.
• "The Lord alone is our God, in whom alone we have enough." Deuteronomy 6:4 ("the Lord our God is one Lord") joined to Psalm 73:25–26, "whom have I in heaven but thee?… God is the strength of my heart."
• "Its waters flow gently, but that very thing is a sign that they are deep." A lovely Tersteegen aphorism about love — the quieter it runs, the deeper it is (the old proverb "still waters run deep," turned devotional).
• "Hides us secretly in His tabernacle… behold the beauty of the Lord… visit His temple. Psalm 27." Tersteegen's own citation. Psalm 27:5, "in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me"; and 27:4, "that I may dwell in the house of the Lord… to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to enquire in his temple." The inner temple no ban can close.
• "A single poisoned arrow into our fortress." Ephesians 6:16, "the fiery darts of the wicked" — but the adversaries cannot even land one, if love holds the walls.
• "Love them nonetheless, however much they hate us." Matthew 5:44, "Love your enemies… pray for them which despitefully use you"; the enemies "plunged, together with us," into Christ's reconciling heart.
• "Everything must serve for the best." Romans 8:28, "all things work together for good to them that love God."
• "This bowing will be a pleasing offering to God." Psalm 51:17, "a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise"; Romans 12:1, "present your bodies a living sacrifice… acceptable unto God." The submission itself is the sacrifice. (In the 1773 print this God stands in full capitals — see the type note.)
• "Reproach and suffering… your daily food." Psalm 42:3, "my tears have been my meat day and night"; Psalm 80:5 — but seasoned with "free love" it nourishes rather than embitters.
• "He loves you; love Him in return." 1 John 4:19, "we love him, because he first loved us."
• "Follow the Lamb through the wilderness." Revelation 14:4, "they… follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth" — heads bowed, through the desert of this constrained life.
• "Rejoice in the countenance of our blessed God." Psalm 16:11, "in thy presence is fulness of joy"; Revelation 22:4, "they shall see his face" — the glad eternity that makes the present bearable.