To an awakened person — concerning her desire for more solitude and stillness, and concerning her inner insensibility.

The Hundred-and-Forty-Fourth Letter.

To an awakened person — concerning her desire for more solitude and stillness, and concerning her inner insensibility.

Much-beloved sister!

Your earlier kind letter, and the later little one, I have duly received. To answer with the pen, I had not the power before now. As for what I asked you about, your answer is enough for me; you may therefore let it drop, forget it, and in the present be at rest with God. Your desire for more solitude and stillness is pleasing to God. God will give you, in His own time, what is profitable for you and pleasing to Him; trust that, childlike, to His fatherly care. But for the present, let this desire for solitude be to you only a preservative among people and business — that you may not let yourself out too far, but rather keep and attain the inward sweet solitude and communion with your Soul-Friend, even amid the unrest. Let your heart be your dearest retreat, where Jesus awaits you and will keep you company; make yourself right familiar with Him — let Him be enough for you! Even amid your business, strengthen yourself often by sincere but quiet glances of love toward Him, even when you should have no feeling at all in it.

Your insensibility arises from a quite other cause than you think. Do not brood much upon it. Enough! — that you want to be wholly the Lord's. At times the feelings would lure you out too much into a seeming liveliness; God sees this, He who would gladly keep you within, close by Him; bear that, then, so quietly and undisturbed as it comes. Grow not weary nor disheartened! God is as near when it is night as when it is day: believe Him, then, just as near, just as favourable, just as lovely, when you feel nothing of it, as when you have feelings. Love and praise Him, for He is truly worth it.

The inmost inclination of your heart, to want to be wholly for God, is the best prayer, which the Holy Spirit works. This is the ever-burning fire upon the heart's altar; keep this fire well covered, and let it burn quietly, and rise up to its Source. The more weaned from all other pleasure and life, the more freely and inwardly it burns; the cross-thorns that lie daily before one's feet are of good help thereto, when one takes them up willingly.

That God may bless your soul, and prepare you after His heart's delight, wishes and prays from the heart

Your

devoted brother.

Mülheim, the 11th of November 1738.

German

Der hundertvierundvierzigste Brief.

An eine erweckte Person, über ihr Verlangen zu mehrerer Einsamkeit und Stille, und über ihre innere Unempfindlichkeit.

Vielgeliebte Schwester!

Deinen ersteren angenehmen Brief und das letztere kleine habe wohl erhalten. Mit der Feder zu antworten, hab nicht eher das Vermögen gehabt.

— 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).