God Himself is the best teacher. How one must follow Him with a forgetting of one's wretchedness, especially by the way of love and of the presence of God. On medicine, alchemy, and gold-making.

The Fifty-Eighth Letter.

God Himself is the best teacher. How one must follow Him with a forgetting of one's wretchedness, especially by the way of love and of the presence of God. On medicine, alchemy, and gold-making.

In the grace of Jesus, dearly beloved friend and brother!

Your last, of the 5th of this month, has come in safely, as have both the earlier ones. My slowness in answering has neither obstinacy nor lovelessness for its ground, but mostly bodily incapacity. The least of my time am I able to write, on account of feebleness — chiefly of the head and the eyes. The rest of my time is quite taken up with visits and writing, so that I cannot by far answer all letters. Nor am I any guide of souls — for that I am far too small: yet I do not withhold myself from bearing witness to the truth of the inward life, as God has let me know it by grace, and from reaching a hand to my brothers as I am able, as one child does to another.

For the rest, my dear friend! you have no cause to seek out a poor creature with so much urgency, and to ask him for counsel. The best Teacher and Guide is certainly unspeakably near to you; His compassionate eyes see through all your misery, and He Himself awakens, in the deepest ground, the secret hungering and longing look for help and deliverance: at and in this very ground, out of which this hungering arises, there the Lord, your Teacher and your Helper, is present. Believe it, over all seeing and feeling, and sink yourself into Him with gentle, simple resignation, as far as He gives you the grace; disclose your hurt to Him with calm and humility, and await from Him the healing with long-suffering trust. This waiting is grace, and furthers us too; the violent nature-drive is to die under it. God is a pure, gentle Being; nothing hard reaches Him: the self does not get the pearl; to the detached spirit He gladly imparts Himself, after He has, through such distress as you are now stuck in, made [you] fair, gentle, little, and pure.

Do hold out, in God's name, and do not grow weary or impatient! Stay lying before the Lord, and thank Him that He grants you this: for He knows when and how He is to help you. Occupy yourself not so much with yourself and with your wretchedness; however you must feel and see it, turn from it only with quiet displeasure; seek to forget it and to sink away from it: further, no straining and struggling is needed. Exodus 14:13 and 14. If you cannot forget it, and sink away from it, then suffer it as calmly as you can, before the Lord's face; for Jesus' sake it is not reckoned to us. To suffer evil is the way to holiness. Above all things, do not give up courage, even should you be wounded, but hand yourself over to the Lord with trust even in that condition — in spite of the self-love that will not appear so soiled.

God loves you, indeed; do love Him too, and venture yourself at it, for the sake of His love. The way of love I especially recommend to you: this alone can and will sufficiently mend all the wretchedness and failings, both of your spirit and of your natural temper. I do not mean a sensuous or felt love, which is often a flower without fruit, and a fodder for self-love, but a solid love. Believe the inward nearness of love! Do, deny, suffer all with an aim of love. Seek, in your whole Christianity, not to please yourself, but the Friend of the heart whom you love. If you can do and find nothing that pleases Him, then bear your misery and incapacity out of love for Him: He accepts this aim of love, even in the midst of dryness and darkness; that one knows in its time. Prescribe nothing to the Lord, but nestle the will of your mind (even when the nature-will resists) sweetly into His blameless love-will and ways over you. To will to love and cleave to Him and the Eternal above all is the ground and the goal of your longing, which His free love has laid in you: this is enough. Make no further pretensions as to what the Lord is to give you, and by which ways He is to reach this goal in you: hand yourself over to Him unconditionally, and let Him deal with you, then it will go well!

In one of your letters you report: that you can very seldom bring about God's holy presence, in an effective way, at a certain time and hour. God is unchangeably present to us in the sweet name of Jesus, as our God and highest good: this faith grasps, over all concept and feeling, and turns inwardly to this Love-Being, gives itself over to Him, reveres and loves this adorable Friend, and awaits all from His infinite goodness. But as for the feeling, or the special gracious revelation of this divine presence — that we cannot bring about by any outward activities; nor must we want to do so; that would be impurity, or a real hindrance: the one as well as the other depends solely on the free good-pleasure of our God. We only follow the leading of grace childlike, and exercise ourselves through it in prayer and in denial; and then we are in that frame of mind in which the Lord can work in us, and impart Himself to us, according to His good-pleasure — so that we, like children, can leave it quite well to the wisdom of the Father. That one should, for the rest (each according to his circumstances), also set apart a certain time and hour for recollection and for prayer, I hold indeed good and needful. But we must not then insist on having something felt; rather remain in the utmost contentment, even in the midst of darkness, dryness — yes, distractions and assaults: only that we do not knowingly cause them ourselves. To serve our God, adore Him, and offer ourselves up to Him — oh, that is blessedness enough.

That your Honor undertakes such an outward business is needful for you and pleasing to God. The intruding thoughts — that everything is, after all, temporal, transient, and what is the use of it? — come merely out of the listlessness and darkness of the natural temper. Through sin we have been driven from Paradise, and become ourselves transient, null, and wretched, and are now, by God's wise ordinance, to till the field of thorns for our repentance and betterment, and to be exercised in occupation with such null things: it would indeed be folly if we still doubted this. Only we should not go into it with our own appetite, nor take on too-large packs, but do all unto the Lord that we do; Colossians 3:23, Ephesians 6:7. Then it will be not only not a hindrance to the spirit, but even a help; yes, through this simple aim — that one does all, small and great, unto the Lord and out of love for Him — thereby the least things become great, and dirt is, as it were, made into gold: to such souls the things are no longer temporal, transient, but their inner form and aim makes them eternal and abiding, and into a real service of God. Whether your Honor, for the rest, works with the pen, or does something in medicine, is all one to the dear God. Mostly the simplest things are the best, because they share least in vanity. In medicine, too, I have for many years sought to serve the needy neighbor a little, and therefore I advise this much, out of experience: stay with the unaffected simplicity — with that, rest and blessing are to be hoped. Extraordinary secret and chemical uncertain curiosities God brings to shame, and blesses despised little herbs. Do not trust the laboratory-books; do not search too deep in the alchemical maze of error, and seek by no means gold, nor gold-tinctures, by which many have been plunged into spiritual and bodily poverty. Above I have said how we can make gold out of dirt; that is to be recommended. To lay oneself wholly upon medicine — when your Honor can otherwise profit something by writing or the like work — I would also not just advise. Medicine gives much anxious thought, much vexation, and much responsibility: I use only a couple of sorts of pills, some powders and essences, all of simple composition: with that I fare best. I do it as a sideline; if the Lord made me quite free of it, it would be even dearer to me.

My age, which your Honor asks after, is nearly forty-seven years; the number of the years is not great; but in them I have come to know much of the vanity of the world, of the corruption of the human heart, and of God's patience and incomprehensible goodness in Christ — and I learn it still daily. Praised be the Lord, who has helped hitherto! About twenty-seven years ago the friendly God called me out of the world, and gave me a mind to want to belong to Him wholly and to follow Him. His grace will keep this mind in us unmoved, to the end. I remain, through grace,

Your Honor's heartily well-disposed friend and brother.

Mülheim, in September 1744.

German

Der achtundfünfzigste Brief.

GOtt selbst ist der beste Lehrer. Wie man demselben mit Vergessung seiner Elenden folgen müsse, sonderlich durch den Weg der Liebe und der Gegenwart GOttes. Von der Medicin, Alchymie und Goldmachen.

In der Gnade JEsu vielgeliebter Freund und Bruder!

Euer Letzteres vom 5ten hujus ist, sowohl als beide vorige, richtig eingelaufen. Meine Trägheit im Antworten hat weder Eigensinn noch Lieblosigkeit zum Grund, sondern meist leibliches Unvermögen.

— 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).