A loving admonition to a brother who had harbored a wicked grudge against someone.
The Hundred-and-Eighteenth Letter.
A loving admonition to a brother who had harbored a wicked grudge against someone.
Dear brother!
That I may answer your letter with a word: it was so far agreeable to me, because in it you confess your wicked grudge against N.; only I had thought you would have written me a word, too, of your particular exercise of prayer — how you bear yourself toward God, and what workings you experience from God in your mind — since the whole of Christianity must once for all be founded upon the offering-up of all one's own life, and upon intimate communion with God through faith and prayer.
It is so, dear brother! as you write: you ought to have been blind in sense and reason; for in these the old serpent has its game, and sets upon us its deceitful black spectacles, so that everything looks black to one, whatever one sees in this thing or that; therefore trust this accuser of the brethren no further (Revelation 12:9 and 10), but let him too be cast out forever from the heaven of your heart, that it may be said in you also: Now is the salvation, and the strength, and the kingdom, and the might of our God come! — as, at the place mentioned in the Revelation, it is very thought-provoking to read.
Assuredly! the sweet, gentle, innocent, reconciling Spirit of Jesus can by no means remain in a mind where room is given even to the most plausible suspicion, or to other adverse powers. Become then, with me, ever more a foolish little child of the heart, that embraces all in childlike love, and, instead of troubling itself over what others do, will know nothing but Jesus, and sink and lose itself, with all, in Jesus' heart. Love the blessed exercise of prayer. God's presence is a Sun of righteousness; it uncovers the subtlest self-will; but whoever, like a sick little chick, only stays beneath the wings of this presence, finds there also all healing. (Malachi 4.) Let your present condition become a truly blessed condition to you, and look upon yourself as one who belongs wholly to God, and is called, through dying and prayer, to become a true child of eternity. Venture your self-will honestly thereto; let it die, without letting any heart-strengthening come to it; so much the wider and more common will your spirit become with God, in whom is our only and eternal life.
I must close, for weakness of the head and want of time. Love one another without falseness in the Lord; it is good that one should ask the other's forgiveness at once, and in the very act, when something comes between; but better still it is when the one has never anything to forgive the other, but takes in love all that others do, and when one has no pity on one's own life, when it does get blows. I greet you and the rest of the household in love.
Your
Mülheim, the 4th of March 1737. devoted brother.
P. S. Pray heartily for me!
German
Der hundertundachtzehnte Brief.
Liebreiche Ermahnung an einen Bruder, der einen bösen Groll gegen jemand geheget.
Lieber Bruder!
Damit ich auf deinen Brief ein Wort antworte, so ist mir derselbe in so weit angenehm gewesen, weil du darin deinen bösen Groll gegen N. gestehest: Nur hätte gedacht, du würdest mir auch ein Wort von deiner besonderen Uebung des Gebets, wie du dich gegen GOtt beträgest …
— 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 loving admonition, written 4 March 1737 to a brother who had written confessing a "wicked grudge" he was nursing against someone. Tersteegen is glad of the confession — but he will not leave him there. The whole letter is an argument for refusing the grudge at its root, in the "sense and reason" where it breeds.
Its argument. The grudge, he says, is not really the brother's own thought but the "old serpent's": it "sets upon us its deceitful black spectacles, so that everything looks black." The remedy is not to argue the case but to distrust "this accuser of the brethren" altogether — the phrase is Revelation's own name for the devil — and to cast him "out forever from the heaven of your heart," so that the great song of Revelation 12 may be sung "in you also." For the "sweet, gentle, reconciling Spirit of Jesus" simply cannot lodge where suspicion is given room. In its place he sets a childlikeness: "become a foolish little child of the heart, that embraces all in childlike love… and will know nothing but Jesus." Then the tender image that carries the letter: God's presence is "a Sun of righteousness" — bright enough to expose "the subtlest self-will," yet the one who stays under it "like a sick little chick under the wings" finds "there also all healing." He ends practically, on forgiveness that is quick and, better, never needed at all, and — weak in the head and short of time — signs off with a P.S.: "Pray heartily for me!"
A few words and echoes.
- "This accuser of the brethren" (Verkläger der Brüder). Revelation 12:10 — the devil, "which accused them before our God day and night," now "cast down." Tersteegen names chapter and verse; the grudge is unmasked as the accuser's own voice heard within.
- "Now is the salvation… of our God come!" Revelation 12:10, quoted (in Luther's wording) as the victory-song to be fulfilled "in you also" once the accuser is cast out of "the heaven of your heart."
- "A Sun of righteousness… beneath the wings." Malachi 4:2 — "the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings." The one figure holds both the exposure of self-will and its cure.
- "The old serpent… its black spectacles." The serpent is Revelation 12:9 ("that old serpent, called the Devil"); the "black spectacles" are Tersteegen's own image for suspicion, which tints everything one sees.
- "Will know nothing but Jesus." 1 Corinthians 2:2 — "I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ."
- "Ask forgiveness at once, in the very act." Cf. Ephesians 4:26 — "let not the sun go down upon your wrath."
trans. Jarred Fenlason · gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdi-thii-118 · all rights reservedEnglish translation © Jarred Fenlason · All rights reserved · gerhardtersteegen.com.