That God is everywhere, but especially near and present to our spirit. An instruction in the simple exercise of this inward presence of God.

The Ninety-eighth Letter.

That God is everywhere, but especially near and present to our spirit. An instruction in the simple exercise of this inward presence of God.

Dear child! Jesus bless you!

You do well to write to me sometimes how it goes with you; but do it always childlike, just as it is given you, without thinking back whether you are doing it rightly — and how I shall take it. And just as childlike must you also take it, in whatever way I do it, whether, namely, I answer you merely in spirit, or also with the pen. This one thing only believe unshakably: that I sincerely love your soul, and rejoice unspeakably over it, when you seek to live with God in childlike faith and childlike love.

These two chief truths let no one ever rob you of, however things may stand about you. First, that God is everywhere, and especially present to your heart. Second, that God loves you dearly for Jesus' sake, and would have you wholly for Himself. The air in which we live is near to us; the air is in us, and we are in the air: God is infinitely nearer to us; we live and float in God; we eat, drink, and work in God; we think in God; and whoever does sin (be not startled that I speak so) sins in God. This presence of God is incomprehensible; we cannot and must not make ourselves any image of it, but only so simply believe it. But how, now, my dear heart, can some outward unrest, business, or people scatter you away from God, as you lament — since you always live in God, and all things are and happen in God? Should we forget the sun, in which we live? Should we not think of our God, adore, love, and praise Him, even in the midst of all businesses and creatures, which in the presence of God are less than a little dust-mote in the sun?

So take everything then (sin alone excepted) as from God; do all your things as before God and in God, as simply and childlike as you can. And as one rejoices when the sun shines, that one may do one's work by it, so rejoice inwardly that you have so near a God and Friend, in whom, at all places and at all times, from without and from within, you can do everything, live, float, die, and love. Now God is indeed, in the manner said, everywhere present; but because He is a Spirit, He is in a quite special and far more blessed way near to our spirit. God is more inward to us than the innermost in us; there He calls us; there He waits for us; there He would impart Himself to us, and so make us blessed. This presence too one must simply believe, without comprehending it, yea, without wanting always to feel it. So then, inwardly, our spirit is God's workshop, temple, and sanctuary, where God dwells and would dwell; so often, therefore, as we turn ourselves, with our love, longing, and heart's devotion, sincerely and childlike to God, and so hold ourselves in faith before His presence — behold, then we go, as it were, to church, and perform our worship solemnly. Even though we are not yet so blessed as those who dwell forevermore in the house of God and praise Him always, as it stands in the 84th Psalm, yet we ought to long after it, and with our longing and our love-thoughts be always there, even amid our businesses — just as the Israelites, wherever they were in the world, always had to turn their face toward the temple.

I will say it to you more simply: Let it be to you as if, in your inward, there were a secret little chamber, where your dearest Friend Jesus were present and waiting for you; there Love must now well constrain you, that you sometimes buy out a little time, and where possible for outward solitude too, so that you may once go in to your Friend, into the little chamber, to speak with Him eye to eye, and to tell Him how it still goes with you, and that you would gladly love Him sincerely. Do you then go back again to your affairs — so let it be to you as if you took your Friend by the hand and asked Him: might He go with you, and keep you company under the work, and guard you — which He will then very gladly do. When you then, under the work, sometimes seek to direct your love and love-thoughts childlike to Him, and desire to do everything for Him that you do, then it can be impossible for it to go ill with you, in any business or with any people; and in time nothing will be able to separate you from Jesus and His sweet love and fellowship.

Do not trouble yourself if you cannot grasp everything I write; you do not need it all either; take a morsel from the dish for yourself, and let N. and N. also take something for themselves. Remember Jesus, and forget yourself.

Mülheim, 29 February 1736.

German

Der 98te Brief.

Daß GOtt überall, besonders aber unserm Geiste nahe und gegenwärtig sey. Eine Anweisung zur einfältigen Uebung dieser inwendigen Gegenwart GOttes.

Liebes Kind! JEsus segne dich!

Du thust wohl, daß du bisweilen schreibest, wie dirs gehet; thue es aber allezeit kindlich, so wie dirs gegeben wird, ohne zurück zu denken, ob du es recht machest?

— 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).