An encouragement, and a heartfelt sigh, toward the renewal of an entire self-offering to God.
The Thirty-First Letter.
An encouragement, and a heartfelt sigh, toward the renewal of an entire self-offering to God.
Dearly beloved sister!
I find myself moved to greet you with the pen as well, as I do many times over with the heart, and to commend you continually to the grace of that Jesus who has loved you and chosen you out of the world. But He did not love you because you were good and faithful — you know that; quite the reverse. He loved and loves you simply because He is sheer mercy and love, and so that you, finding nothing in yourself, might lose yourself, living and dying, in this loving Good, and only adore. To that end may He then give you grace, and remain most inwardly near your spirit in your sickness, so that in entire surrender and forgetting of all that is temporal, and of yourself, you may stay turned to this eternally-contenting Good alone, and resigned to it with pure trust, be it unto life or unto death.
Lord, my God! Thou art He alone whom we mean; Thou art my God, my Good, my hope, my rest and salvation in eternity. Thou alone art enough for me. Thou shalt be it, though body and soul should fail. If ever my heart renounced the world and all pleasures outside Thee, then I repeat it now with all willingness. If I have otherwise had courage to enter upon Thy way of the cross, then I renew that mind, and give over my whole life of nature and of self into the fellowship of Thy death, and testify that, to please Thee, I will gladly suffer and be purified according to all Thy good pleasure. All the acts of self-offering and entire surrender and committal into Thy hands that have been made before, I confirm and subscribe once again; and I wish that my last breath may still say: Lord! I am Thine, wholly and for ever; be it done to me according to Thy good pleasure! Thee will I love and glorify, come what may — for Thou art worthy of it, O Thou blessed and blessed-making Good! Amen, Jesus!
Herewith, dear sister! I lay you down once more at the feet of Jesus, with the prayer that He would bless your soul out of His sanctuary, now and eternally, Amen! All the friends here greet you, and you children together, along with me, who remain
Your weak fellow-brother.
Mülheim, 18 October 1742.
P.S. Let your brothers and your sister also subscribe this little letter for themselves, as I too do from the heart.
German
Der einunddreißigste Brief.
Aufmunterung und herzlicher Seufzer zur Erneuerung einer gänzlichen Aufopferung an GOtt.
Herzlich geliebte Schwester!
Ich finde mich bewogen, dich auch noch mit der Feder zu grüßen, wie ichs vielfältig mit dem Herzen thue, und dich stets in die Gnade desjenigen JEsu empfehle, der dich geliebet und aus der Welt erwählet hat.
— 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. Almost exactly a year after the letter that found Anna Maria Elisabeth Schmitz dangerously ill, she is ill again, and Tersteegen writes to her a third time. He gives her almost no counsel. Instead he writes out, in her name, an act of self-offering — a renewal of everything she had ever given to God — and then asks, in a postscript, that her two brothers and her sister sign it with her. The letter is a document as much as a letter.
The first paragraph clears the ground, and it is the sentence readers of these letters remember: "He did not love you because you were good and faithful — you know that; quite the reverse. He loved and loves you simply because He is sheer mercy and love." The purpose of that love is stated just as plainly: that she, "finding nothing in herself," might lose herself in this loving Good "and only adore."
Then the prayer, which the old printer set apart in its own typeface, and inside which he spaced out two words — the two verbs on which the whole act turns. If I have otherwise had courage to enter upon Thy way of the cross, I renew that mind; and all the acts of surrender made before, I confirm and subscribe once again. It ends where such acts should end: "I wish that my last breath may still say: Lord! I am Thine, wholly and for ever." Readers of his hymns will hear something familiar here — this prayer stands very close to the opening of "Brunn alles Heils," the hymn he published three years later. And then the household. The same four orphaned children who had received the New Year's letter after their father's death are asked to countersign: "Let your brothers and your sister also subscribe this little letter for themselves, as I too do from the heart." A private act of consecration turned, in one line, into a family one.
A few words and echoes.
- chosen you out of the world. John 15:19 — "but I have chosen you out of the world."
- He is sheer mercy and love. 1 John 4:8, 16 — "God is love."
- "though body and soul should fail." Psalm 73:26 — the KJV reads "My flesh and my heart faileth"; Tersteegen is quoting the German Bible, which has "body and soul" where the English has "flesh and heart."
- the fellowship of Thy death. Romans 6:5 — "planted together in the likeness of his death"; and behind it Philippians 3:10, "the fellowship of his sufferings."
- "be it done to me according to Thy good pleasure." Luke 1:38 and Luke 22:42 — Mary's word and the Lord's own in Gethsemane.
- bless your soul out of His sanctuary. Psalm 20:2 — "send thee help from the sanctuary." Readers of his hymns will hear something familiar at exactly this point: it is where the first strophe of his own Brunn alles Heils, published three years later, asks that out of God's sanctuary His high blessing come down on us.
- subscribe. The old legal word for signing one's name at the foot of a deed — which is exactly what he means it to be.
- Schenkung und Ueberlassung. Not simply "surrender": these are the two halves of a German conveyance — Schenkung is a deed of gift, Ueberlassung the making-over of the thing given. He is not using devotional language that happens to sound legal. He is using the legal words, and then asking the family to countersign.
trans. Jarred Fenlason · gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdii-thiii-031 · all rights reservedEnglish translation © Jarred Fenlason · All rights reserved · gerhardtersteegen.com.