To a person of high rank. Of the usefulness of sufferings and adversities in this life.
The Twelfth Letter.
To a person of high rank. Of the usefulness of sufferings and adversities in this life.
Most nobly born, most gracious Lady Countess!
That Your High Comital Grace deigned, now more than a year ago, to honor me with Your gracious letter, was at once acknowledged and venerated by me as a singular favor. It would have been my high duty to testify my gratitude, and to thank Your High Comital Grace for Your condescendance and well-disposed letter — as I still do by these lines, with a sincere heart. My head- and eye-pains, continuing since then almost without pause, and the illness that followed them through this winter, will, I hope, excuse me with Your High Comital Grace.
That my most gracious Lady Countess should let so much concern rest on my littleness, and even now inquire after my condition, might well put me to shame. It is known to the Lord that I wish, and have wished from my heart, to my most gracious lords, and in particular to Your High Comital Grace, constant contentment and unending blessing in my weakness. As for myself: it pleases the God to whom, in Christ, I have wholly given myself up for His service and good pleasure, to lay upon me, unworthy, His priceless cross, in more than one manner, these many years. I embrace it with my whole heart, by His grace, and let all the delights of the visible lie there in exchange, as unworthy, harmful, and nothing. I desire my sufferings not a hair otherwise — only this besides, that I may carry them after Him with unmoved joyfulness of faith and willingness, and by His divine power may die to all the remainder of the natural life on the cross, in conformity to the death of Jesus Christ my Saviour, and He alone live in me!
That Your High Comital Grace, in Your high station, will not lack sufferings and discontents, now here, now there, I can easily conceive, and know in part. That such things (as my most gracious Lady Countess mentions in Your letter) come sour to our flesh and blood, is in no way to be wondered at; but we know also that flesh and blood shall nevermore inherit the kingdom of God, but are to be crucified. Your High Comital mind will surely be far too generous to let itself be softened by such a sensibility out of swearing to our most precious Captain of salvation an eternal oath of fidelity — persevering with constant sincerity in prayer and the fight of faith, and awaiting from Him himself, under Christ's banner of the cross, the victory over all the contrary powers of nature. To no child is the weaning from its mother's breast so profitable as when the heavenly Father, by the bitternesses of this life, would wean us from the soul-corrupting love of the visible. Ah! it is an all-too-great grace when He breaks our will, and hedges our way, as it were, with thorns, that we may not run from Him but to Him. Did we recognize God's high purposes over us when He causes us pain, we would kiss His rod of love, and love and cleave to Him only so much the more heartily.
My heart grows right anxious when I look at people with whom, in their state of nature, everything goes after their heart's wish — who either know of no adversity, or constantly seek to escape it through harmful diversions. The more we come to know Jesus and His blessed fellowship by happy experience, the more our eyes are opened to see all other things too with new — that is, with supernatural — eyes: His cross becomes precious and beautiful to us, and His reproach honorable; the world, on the contrary, and her noblest wares please us no longer at all; for once for all, Christ and the world are far too contrary to one another ever to dwell in one and the same heart. Therefore he is blessed and wise, here and forever, who counts everything the world offers as loss and dung, that he may win the noble Pearl — Christ. Amen!
That Your High Comital Grace is pleased to inquire once more concerning the erection of an orphan-house or poor-house: to this the most dutiful answer is that I regard the thing indeed as useful, pleasing to God, and practicable, but esteem my powers of body and mind far too weak for so weighty an undertaking. For the Lord, meanwhile, it is a small thing yet to open a door to it; though we see by David's example (2 Samuel 7) that not all designs pleasing to God come at once to actual effect.
To become acquainted with Your High Comital Grace's kinswoman, the Countess of N., would be agreeable to me, and an honor, as God leads; I commend myself to her with most dutiful respect, and wish her high house and heart the blessing, illumination, and grace of the most high God, unto the experiential knowledge and love of God and of our Saviour. This same (for I can find nothing higher or more to be wished) I beg also, sincerely, before the throne of the divine graces, for my most gracious lord, for Your High Comital Grace, also for all the young lordships, and for the whole High Comital house! To Your high favor I commend myself most humbly, and shall at all times give proof that I am, with inmost sincerity,
Most nobly born, most gracious Lady Countess,
Your High Comital Grace's faithful subject and intercessor.
Mülheim, the 13th of July 1740.
German
Der zwölfte Brief.
An eine hohe Standes-Person. Von der Nutzbarkeit der Leiden und Widerwärtigkeiten in diesem Leben.
Hochgebohrne, Gnädigste Frau Gräfin!
Daß Ew. Hoch-Gräfl.
— 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 old print calls the recipient only "a person of high rank"; she was in fact Catharina Polyxena, Countess of Leiningen-Heidesheim — wife of the reigning Count of Broich, in whose little territory Tersteegen's own Mülheim lay. The ribbon-weaver writes to his sovereign's house, and the letter is a double performance: flawless chancery courtesy on the surface — "Your High Comital Grace," "most gracious Lady Countess," a closing worthy of a court secretary — and underneath it, without softening one syllable, his whole theology of the cross. The courtly French words scattered through the German (condescendance, sensibilité, diversions, designs) stand in the old print in a different typeface, like guests in foreign dress; this edition sets them in italic. Asked after his own health, Tersteegen answers with the most startling courtesy in the letter: the years of pain are the attention of God — "it pleases the God to whom… I have wholly given myself up… to lay upon me, unworthy, His priceless cross." And then the sentence that could stand over his whole correspondence: "I desire my sufferings not a hair otherwise" — save only that he may carry them after Christ, and "die to all the remainder of the natural life… and He alone live in me."
Rank does not exempt the countess either: in her "high station" too there will be sufferings and discontents, sour to flesh and blood — "but we know also that flesh and blood shall nevermore inherit the kingdom of God, but are to be crucified." He appeals to her nobility itself: too generous a mind to be softened by sensibility out of the oath of fidelity to "our most precious Captain of salvation." Then the letter's tenderest figure, the weaning of the child — "to no child is the weaning from its mother's breast so profitable as when the heavenly Father… would wean us from the soul-corrupting love of the visible"; and its boldest, the hedge of thorns — "an all-too-great grace, when He breaks our will, and hedges our way… with thorns, that we may not run from Him but to Him. Did we recognize God's high purposes… we would kiss His rod of love."
Those who never suffer — or drown adversity in diversions — make him anxious; happy experience of Jesus opens "supernatural eyes" in which His cross grows beautiful, His reproach honorable, and the world's noblest wares stale: "Christ and the world are far too contrary to one another ever to dwell in one and the same heart." Whoever counts all "as loss and dung" wins "the noble Pearl — Christ." Then business, deftly declined: the countess has again proposed that he lead the founding of an orphan-house; he judges the plan "useful, pleasing to God, and practicable" — and himself too weak; God can open His own door, and David teaches (2 Samuel 7) that not every God-pleasing design comes to effect in its proposer's hands. The close returns to full court dress — and signs, beneath all the titles, with the two words that are actually his office toward the great house: subject and intercessor.
A few words and echoes.
- Flesh and blood… crucified. 1 Corinthians 15:50 and Galatians 5:24 — the letter's hinge from etiquette to gospel.
- Captain of salvation. Hebrews 2:10 — "the captain of their salvation… made perfect through sufferings" — Herzog der Seligkeit, the old German word making Christ the Duke who leads his own through suffering.
- Conformity to His death. Philippians 3:10 — "being made conformable unto his death" — and Galatians 2:20 for "He alone live in me."
- Loss and dung… the pearl. Philippians 3:8 and Matthew 13:45–46 fused in one sentence.
- The hedge of thorns. Hosea 2:6 — "I will hedge up thy way with thorns" — read as grace.
- David's example. 2 Samuel 7 — the temple David was not permitted to build; the God-pleasing design reserved for other hands.
trans. Jarred Fenlason · gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdii-thiii-012 · all rights reservedEnglish translation © Jarred Fenlason · All rights reserved · gerhardtersteegen.com.