Letters · Zweiter Band · Theil III (1775)

How one may come to the forgetting of oneself and of all created things.

Bd II · Th III · Brief 62 · Der zweiundsechzigste Brief

Addressee — To Johann Schmitz — bookbinder of Solingen, one of Tersteegen's Solingen printing associates; the print suppresses the name, heading the letter N. N. The full name, place, and occasion are recovered from the autograph: the letter is a working letter that opens with the printing of the Kleiner Kempis (small Imitation of Christ) and a Register for the Neander hymnal, into which Tersteegen folds this passage of spiritual counsel. Written in the intimate du (English you). Addressee-line in the reader text = N. N.; no subscription in the reader text (GEB cut the signature — the letter closes with the dateline only).
Date — Mülheim, 21 January 1745 — the print dateline reads Mülheim, den 21. Jan. 1745.
Provenance — *Translated from the public-domain 1775 first edition (Theil III, pp. 191–193), in normalized GS-1845 house orthography. All rendered words are from the public-domain print.

The Sixty-Second Letter.

How one may come to the forgetting of oneself and of all created things.

N. N.

The forgetting of yourself and of all created things is very good; but it must not happen directly and with strain — rather through a simple letting-go, and through a quiet, loving glance of your devotion upon God, who is so near. This mindful, childlike glance tells God great things; it says and does all that one has to do and to say. As we now make God our habitual and, where possible, unshifting object of devotion and love, one forgets oneself and all the rest ever more over it, and is sanctified — unnoticed, but thoroughly. According to the measure of our self-denial, the turning to God grows easier; and the self-denial too grows easier when we accustom ourselves to God in the said manner. Both must go paired; but our proper object-without-object (that is, without image) must be God's presence, and not ourselves, or our self-denial. He surrounds us; He fills us; He wills to dwell in us as a friend. A wonder, that we can think of anything else! In Him, out of reverence toward Him, and to please Him, we ought to leave and forget ourselves and the creature, and lose ourselves, with all our misery, in the sea of His love-nearness.

That your reason is capable of all sorts of things — even of atheistic promptings — does not surprise me: we will not look round after them. The talk of fools is not to be answered. When one comes, just so, among coarse people in the inn, one behaves oneself and goes out again as soon as one can. It is true, you have as yet no pure love for God; but where does one find those foolish children who wail because they are not [grown] men? Only suck freely, and you will grow bigger. Both you and I still lack something more, and yet I am not anxious that God should not help us further. But let us rather stay at home; and if we do go out — whether accompanied, or, alas! without leave — let us return again at once.

It is true, I said lately that if you were a little still, you would then, through the sight of yourself, become faint and despondent; whereas if you were not just still, you would still have tolerable courage. But do not forget what I said along with it: I would rather it were the other way round — namely, that you became a little despondent in distraction, but never in recollection; for there the sight of God is to make us very well comforted.

Oh, how greatly are we bound to love our good God, who is so long-suffering with us, and who, through many a hurt, must bring us to the fullness of surrender, in order to make us happy! Would that we might, once and for all, venture it honestly!

Mülheim, the 21st of January 1745.

❦

German

Der zweiundsechzigste Brief.

Wie man zu Vergessung seiner selbst und aller geschaffenen Dinge gelange.

N. N. Das Vergessen deiner selbst und aller geschaffenen Dinge ist sehr gut, muß aber nicht direct und mit Anstrengung geschehen, sondern durch ein einfältiges Fallenlassen, und durch einen ruhigen liebvollen Blick deiner Andacht auf den so nahen GOtt.

— 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. A short, concentrated letter on self-forgetfulness — and, as the print gives it, a pure distillate. In the original working letter (to Johann Schmitz, the Solingen bookbinder who printed devotional books under Tersteegen's eye), this passage sits between practical business about a small edition of the Imitation of Christ and warm greetings to Schmitz's family; the 1775 editors lifted out the spiritual heart and let it stand alone, under a suppressed name. What remains is Tersteegen's most compact statement of a method he returns to again and again. Self-forgetting "is very good, but it must not happen directly and with strain" — you cannot force yourself to forget yourself. The way is instead "a simple letting-go, and a quiet, loving glance of your devotion upon God, who is so near." Make God the mind's habitual and "unshifting object," and the self drops away of itself: "one forgets oneself and all the rest ever more over it, and is sanctified — unnoticed, but thoroughly."

The letter's most characteristic move is a fine paradox: our "proper object-without-object (that is, without image) must be God's presence, and not ourselves, or our self-denial." Even self-denial can become a new form of self-preoccupation; the cure is not to look harder at the self but to lose it — "with all our misery, in the sea of His love-nearness." Tersteegen then turns to his correspondent's worry about intrusive, even "atheistic" thoughts: they are "the talk of fools," not to be answered, no more than one argues with rough company met by chance in an inn — "one behaves oneself and goes out again as soon as one can." His encouragements are homely and tender — "only suck freely, and you will grow bigger" — and his last counsel corrects a common confusion: despondency at the sight of oneself belongs to distraction, never to recollection, "for there the sight of God is to make us very well comforted." He ends, running out of time, with a doxology to the God "so long-suffering with us," who through "many a hurt" brings us to "the fullness of surrender."

A few words and echoes.

not with strain, but a letting-go. The heart of the method: self-forgetfulness cannot be forced; it comes through "a simple letting-go" and "a quiet, loving glance of your devotion upon God, who is so near."
the object without image. Vorwurf ohne Vorwurf — the mind's true "object" in prayer is God's bare presence, "without image," not any thought of ourselves or even of our own self-denial.
the sea of His love-nearness. seiner Liebes-Nahheit — one of Tersteegen's coined compounds: to lose oneself "with all our misery" in the nearness of God's love.
the talk of fools. Intrusive, "atheistic" promptings of the reason are not to be argued with, but left behind, "as one goes out of an inn full of rough company as soon as one can."
suck freely, and you will grow bigger. A nursing image of the beginner's soul — feed simply and without anxiety, and growth comes of itself.
despondency belongs to distraction, never to recollection. The letter's corrective: be troubled, if at all, when scattered — but in the gathered stillness "the sight of God is to make us very well comforted."

Cite this letter

Gerhard Tersteegen, Geistliche und erbauliche Briefe, Zweiter Band, III. Theil, Brief 62 (Solingen, 1773–75); trans. Jarred Fenlason, https://gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdii-thiii-062.html.

← Bd II · Th III · Brief 61 Bd II · Th III · Brief 63 →