Of the singular mercy of God, that He lets us feel what we are in ourselves, and how one is to bear oneself in this state.

The Hundred-and-Eleventh Letter.

Of the singular mercy of God, that He lets us feel what we are in ourselves, and how one is to bear oneself in this state.

Dear brother!

Your last letter, of the 22nd and 29th of last month, was the more welcome to me than any single one of your little letters that I have otherwise received from you, because through it I gained a fuller insight into your state. You have at other times meant, indeed, to write simply, but it was somehow no straight simplicity; you had to make yourself simple. Now you write straight, as you know yourself, and so it must be; that gives me, then, more opening in the mind too.

I have not left off writing to you on purpose; I have not been able. And if I had left it undone with any reflection, it would sooner have happened because I do not think myself to be one from whom others should expect anything, than for the reason that I thought there was not much doing with you, as you write: I do not believe that I have had to write to you sooner than today.

When I look at what God is doing on your soul, I cannot doubt that He does purpose to make something right of you. But make yourself ready for this too — that you can also stake and sacrifice something, yea everything, thereby, in order to follow rightly the God who calls you. It is God's singular mercy that He gives you to feel what you are in yourself. This will unnoticed prepare you to forsake yourself, in order to go into God, who alone wills to become our life. Your sensibility is mobile, delicate, and tender; if it is to have no food in the creaturely, it seeks it in the spiritual, and would gladly draw to itself God and all divine gifts. Now since the Lord, for your good, does not let much flow to the sensibility, nature takes on a peevish, fretful shape, and would fain bite the stone with the dog; and because self-love lies at the bottom, faint-heartedness is then the end. What is to be done? Only to follow God in His wholesome leading, who wills to destroy your self-love and make you able to love Him with a straight turning of your heart — even as self-love is a crooked turning to ourselves. He has laid something in your heart that wills to be wholly and for ever for God; this inclination lies there deep, dark, universal; but you want to bring it into the sensibility, and delight yourself therein; or you weaken it by turning outward.

Only let everything in the natural part stir as it will; suffer it all, without much disturbance and inspecting — the dryness of your sensible part too — and believe that you please God in this suffering; so will God soon meet you, and show you how you must love and cleave to Him, not with the sensibility, but with the heart, in faith: namely, that deep-hidden, pure inclination will grow more inward and freer to turn to God in you, to embrace Him, and to lose itself in Him — more through God's working than your own. At present you suffer, as I said, what stirs in nature and in the sensible part, yet meanwhile let your patient noticing upon God — as present in you — remain straight, and follow with this patient noticing the above-named inclination, NB. innocently, and as well as you can and know, without heeding it, or letting yourself be led astray by it, when some self-property stirs; whatever falls in after that manner, one lets fall out again unnoticed. What else you report of your prayer-exercise is good. On the one part you must heartily gladly want to do it rightly well for the dear God; on the other part, though, not too exactly, and always inspecting, whether you are doing it so rightly well? Mark both. Keep good order in the outward, that both sloth and confusion may be avoided. Speak little. Let it be all one to you, through whom God wills to exercise and better you: your self-love must have something; only be not despondent, but of good cheer under all wretchednesses. NB. Your inner sight must always stay turned straight upon God, in whom is all our salvation and rest. Dying is the name of the seed out of which the inner prayer is born, and wherewith it is manured. Let it be ventured in Jesus' Name, who bless your soul! I remain in Him

Your

Mülheim, the 5th of January, 1737. — weak brother.

P. S. Your wife I greet heartily. May the Child Jesus become anew sweet and dear to her in the New Year! I give over her soul wholly to this Jesus; because He loves her, He also chastens her; let her, then, take it too no otherwise than in love. All the rest there who seek and love Jesus are heartily greeted by me and the children here.

German

Der hundertundelfte Brief.

Von der sonderbaren Barmherzigkeit GOttes, daß Er uns fühlen lasse, was wir in uns selbst sind, und wie man sich in diesem Stande zu betragen.

Lieber Bruder!

Dein letzteres Schreiben von 22ten und 29ten vorigen Monats ist mir darum angenehmer gewesen, als ein einiges deiner Brieflein, die ich sonst von dir erhalten, weil ich dardurch eine mehrere Einsicht in deinen Stand bekommen.

— 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).