To a countess, that spiritual poverty is precisely the way whereby God can be most glorified in us.
The Hundred-and-Fifth Letter.
To a countess, that spiritual poverty is precisely the way whereby God can be most glorified in us.
May Jesus live!
In the Same, most worthy countess and dearly beloved sister!
Your gracious remembrance is ever refreshing and blessed to me. We will refresh one another eternally, through the mercy of Him who has called us, and who will also carry it out through Himself; for He is good, and His mercy endures for ever. Amen!
This sheet I will not fill with a recital of the manifold reasons why I have not written sooner. Enough! that it has by no means been for want of love. I have also, in weakness, sent many a little letter over through the Spirit of love, trusting that our fellowship in the Lord will remain unshaken.
It seems to me the dear Father has, after all, only His good purposes in it, that I should be weak in body and in spirit. Let but His power be perfected in my weakness, and I am well content with my lot. Faith in Jesus suffers no choosing of one's own. It is mercy enough that He keeps us in His leading; how should we still talk into it, or mistrust Him, after He has revealed His high and precious Name? True, one learns daily more deeply how fast one has gripped oneself, and how wretched is all that comes forth out of us. But precisely in true poverty God is most gloriously transfigured, as He who loves us for His own sake, and by the light of faith directs us not to lie still at any faint-hearted self-inspection, but to let ourselves ever more thoroughly go, with closed eyes, that He may have free hand and room to lead us and to work us as His entire possession. Our misery in this point is unspeakable; one always wants to accord subtly, and not to leave oneself to discretion; and precisely thereby we enlarge and prolong our misery.
O how good is God to all those who trust in Him! But precisely therefore He wills that they should be nothing in all things, and let Him alone live in them. Ah, my God! Thy ways are sheer goodness and truth. How most beseeming it is to Thee, and how most blessed it is to us, that our All should be subject to Thee in bare dependence, and Thou alone shouldst reign and live in us eternally! Set forward, then, Thy begun work in us in grace; triumph over all the resistances of the self-life, that Thy alone-pure Life may penetrate us unhindered and unmingled! Amen, Jesus!
The most worthy countess and sister I greet in hearty bond of love, and commend myself to your spirit's hand-reaching in prayer: I hope, for my part, to be mindful of you too in weakness. The whole high-comital House — both the reigning Lord Count and Lady Countess, their Excellencies, as also the rest of the high-comital children and children's children — is likewise most humbly and heartily greeted by me. The Lord set this House for a blessing upon earth! Amen. To all appearance we shall, in this mortality, probably see one another no more: yet what does that matter? If only we are in Jesus, we can ever enjoy and bless one another: that this may be done ever more fully, and soon eternally, is the hearty wish of
The most worthy countess and sister's
Mülheim, the 29th of October, 1736.
most humble and devoted member.
German
Der hundertundfünfte Brief.
An eine Gräfin, daß die geistliche Armuth eben der Weg sey, wodurch sich GOtt am meisten in uns verherrlichen könne.
Es lebe JEsus!
In demselben wertheste Frau Gräfin und vielgeliebte Schwester! Dero geneigtes Andenken ist mir jederzeit erquicklich und gesegnet.
— 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. The first letter in Part Two written to someone of rank — a reigning countess, addressed as "most worthy countess and dearly beloved sister." Tersteegen, who kept up a wide correspondence among the nobility as freely as among tradesmen and servants, writes to her exactly as he writes to everyone: about the one thing he thought mattered. He apologizes lightly for his long silence ("Enough! that it has by no means been for want of love"), owns his poor health as the Father's "good purpose," and then gives her the heart of the letter — a meditation on spiritual poverty.
Its argument. The theme is stated in the title: spiritual poverty is precisely the way whereby God can be most glorified in us. We keep discovering, Tersteegen says, "how fast one has gripped oneself, and how wretched is all that comes forth out of us" — and that discovery, painful as it is, is the doorway. "Precisely in true poverty God is most gloriously transfigured, as He who loves us for His own sake." The right response to one's own emptiness is not to "lie still at any faint-hearted self-inspection," but "to let ourselves ever more thoroughly go, with closed eyes," so that God has "free hand and room… to work us as His entire possession." Our great mistake — "our misery in this point is unspeakable" — is that "one always wants to make subtle terms, and not to leave oneself to His discretion," and so we only "enlarge and prolong our misery." The letter rises into a prayer — "Thy ways are sheer goodness and truth… Thou alone shouldst reign and live in us" — and closes with an unusually formal, courtly greeting to the whole comital house, "their Excellencies" and all the children and grandchildren, and the quiet acknowledgement that he and the countess will "in this mortality, probably see one another no more."
A few words and echoes.
- "Let but His power be perfected in my weakness." 2 Corinthians 12:9 — "my strength is made perfect in weakness." Tersteegen turns his own frailty into the very ground of contentment.
- "His mercy endures for ever." The refrain of Psalm 136 (and Psalm 106:1, 118:1) — the ground of the whole letter's confidence.
- "That they should be nothing in all things, and let Him alone live in them." The Pauline "I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me" (Galatians 2:20) — poverty of self as the room in which Christ lives.
- "To leave oneself to His discretion." A merchant's word (accordiren = to settle terms, Discretion = surrender-at-mercy) turned to the soul: instead of bargaining subtle terms with God, surrender unconditionally, "on His discretion."
- "Thy ways are sheer goodness and truth." Psalm 25:10 — "All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth."
- "Most humble and devoted member." He signs not as a director but as a member — one limb of the same body — even to a countess.
trans. Jarred Fenlason · gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdi-thii-105 · all rights reservedEnglish translation © Jarred Fenlason · All rights reserved · gerhardtersteegen.com.