Letters · Zweiter Band · Theil III (1775)

Weighty reminders to orphaned children, concerning their inward and their outward life.

Bd II · Th III · Brief 25 · Der fünfundzwanzigste Brief

Addressee — Plural ihr → English you. No salutation: the print sets an asterisk row where the Abschrift carries the address block.
Date — Mülheim, 28 December 1741 — print dateline "Mülheim, den 28. Dec. 1741."; a New Year's letter ("Also wünschet euch zum Neuen Jahr").
Provenance — All rendered words from public-domain prints.*

The Twenty-Fifth Letter.

Weighty reminders to orphaned children, concerning their inward and their outward life.

\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \*

Now, you dear orphaned children all together! It has pleased the God of life to take your dear father away from before your eyes, after he had lain there a good while in his sickness as your mirror. Oh! may the Lord grant that this his death may awaken in you all a living movement toward God, whereby everything may become distasteful to you that is not God and according to His perfect will, and the whole intent be turned to the Eternal, and there stand fast! You stand now, for the greater part, no longer under human obedience; oh! do not therefore in any wise follow yourselves, your own good opinion, will and desires, but give yourselves over by a free choice anew to God, to be servants and handmaids in His obedience for ever; so will He hold you as His sons and daughters. Ah! this is not a mere saying, but essential and immortal blessedness, which this eternal Good heartily and gladly grants and gives you.

The way to God's heart stands open to you in the blessed name Jesus: but the way to the world stands open to you too. From both sides you will be enticed, but neither will compel you. So do not deliberate long, then! To serve both masters cannot be done. Make now such a choice that God and men may see to whom you belong, and that you too may one day lay down your head in peace, when you must make the passage which your father has now made. Could he speak to you once more out of eternity: think, what would he counsel you? Would he not say? Ah, my dear children, beware of the deceitful glitter of the world! Strive only to provide for your souls, and to serve God with your whole heart, though for it you should be hated by all the world and become beggar-poor; for God's love and fellowship is alone to be called a true good, etc.

That is also my brotherly counsel on this occasion, my dear ones! Seek to draw your affairs in as short as may be, so that you just come through, and can serve God unhindered in them; though I cannot tell you exactly how to arrange it, since I cannot know all the circumstances precisely enough until I have fuller report — and Brother P. will counsel you in it according to need.

Do take yourselves fair time for prayer and recollection to God in your hearts, which is now so much the more needful, because otherwise, through outward deliberations and the ordering of things, the mind can be made unfeeling, dark and dull. We are to cut off the needless; and what must be done, do as before God and in His obedience. Avoid all needless and hindering company. Love all the devout heartily, but seek the common company only of those who are most earnest and most spiritual. Love one another heartily in God, too — yes, let each love the other even more than himself, and seek his true best. Take one another's burdens off, and be open-hearted. But let the whole intent toward God, and the detached walk in His presence, penetrate all your doing: and according to it everything else must be ordered. Oh! that God, and I and all the devout, may here and eternally have pure joy in you, and that we may find ourselves eternally together in His house!

Now, my Saviour, do Thou grant this! Let, in the power of Thy blessed name Jesus, the wellspring of Thy pure love be opened in the hearts of all the children of this house, and let them be drawn in, away from everything, to love only Thee and to cleave to Thee with their whole heart, unturningly! To Thy faithful oversight and government of grace I commit them most inwardly in this evil world. Ah! let not a single one of these little sheep be missing. Bless and keep them in Thy name! Amen, Jesus!

Thus wishes you at the New Year

Your devoted weak fellow-pilgrim.

Mülheim, 28 December 1741.

❦

German

Der fünfundzwanzigste Brief.

Wichtige Erinnerungen an Elterlose Kinder, ihr Inneres und Aeußeres betreffend.

\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \* Nun ihr liebe Elterlose Kinder insgesamt! Es hat dem GOtt des Lebens gefallen, euren lieben Vater, nachdem er in seiner Krankheit eine geraume Zeit zu eurem Spiegel da gelegen, von euren Augen weg zunehmen.

— 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. In the letters just before this one, Tersteegen wrote to a dangerously sick young woman of the Schmitz family in Solingen. Weeks later her father died, and at the year's end Tersteegen writes this circular to the four brothers and sisters together — orphaned now, most of them grown, suddenly their own masters. Where a greeting would stand, the printer set only a double row of stars: the letter was for the whole house. It is a condolence letter with almost no condolence in it; its whole business is the choice that an emptied parental home lays before the children.

The letter's centre is a bold pastoral stroke: since the children can no longer hear their father, Tersteegen lets him speak once more "out of eternity" — and the old printer set the imagined speech apart in its own typeface, kept here in italics. What the dead man says is what every reader of these letters knows the dying see most clearly: beware the deceitful glitter of the world; provide for your souls; serve God — the one word the print sets in full capitals — with your whole heart, though it make you "beggar-poor"; only God's love and fellowship "is alone to be called a true good." After the voice falls silent, Tersteegen adds his own homelier counsel: keep the estate business short, take time for prayer (the print sets even these words apart), avoid needless company, love one another, carry one another's burdens. Like the letter to their sick sister, this one ends in a prayer set off by the printer — but now for the whole household: that the wellspring of the Saviour's love be opened in the hearts of all the children of this house, "and let not a single one of these little sheep be missing." Then a single line turns the whole letter into a New Year's greeting, and he signs himself, as ever, from below: "your devoted weak fellow-pilgrim."

A few words and echoes.

"To serve both masters cannot be done." Matthew 6:24 — "No man can serve two masters" — the letter's hinge, set between the two open ways.
"Make now such a choice…" Joshua 24:15 — "choose you this day whom ye will serve"; the orphans' freedom is real, and so is the choice.
the deceitful glitter of the world. 1 John 2:15–17 — "the world passeth away, and the lust thereof."
as your mirror. The dying father, long sick before their eyes, was himself the lesson — a mirror of what every child of Adam must come to.
"let not a single one of these little sheep be missing." John 17:11–12 — "keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me… and none of them is lost."
the wellspring of Thy pure love. John 4:14 — the water that springs up into everlasting life.
"lay down your head in peace." Psalm 4:8 — "I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep."

Cite this letter

Gerhard Tersteegen, Geistliche und erbauliche Briefe, Zweiter Band, III. Theil, Brief 25 (Solingen, 1773–75); trans. Jarred Fenlason, https://gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdii-thiii-025.html.

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