Particular directions concerning daily times of withdrawal for prayer, and also concerning the exercise of prayer itself.
The Sixty-Third Letter.
Particular directions concerning daily times of withdrawal for prayer, and also concerning the exercise of prayer itself.
Dearly beloved brother!
My last may well have been no pleasant thing to your nature: but that is a proof that my love for you is growing; for it is a weak and sometimes harmful love where one dare not risk telling another what is right before God.
To your latest I say, in few words, that since I am not with you, and cannot see for myself when and what you have to do, I cannot prescribe you the times for withdrawal so precisely either. In general I will advise this much: take half an hour two or three times daily for it — say morning, noon and evening. According as it best suits your affairs, you can arrange the precise hours yourself, and after some time (as you please) take other hours, so that nothing creeps unnoticed into these hours. On rising, one worships God's loving presence, and offers oneself up to Him briefly but heartily as His true possession; and after one has then made oneself ready, and done what is most needful about the house — so far as it allows no postponing and might disturb the prayer — one can then take a time for withdrawal. Perhaps shortly before noon, or else, if it suits better, in the afternoon one takes another half-hour: immediately after eating it does not suit so well. And in the evening you can settle yourself for a time again, and either prepare yourself a little to begin with by some quite short reading of a nourishing truth, or else simply follow the grace, if you should find yourself forestalled by a devotion, a recollection, an inward longing, or an impression of love.
The faith of God's inward loving presence, and the mind to be wholly His, must lie at the ground of all prayer. And when one does not find oneself forestalled by grace in some other way, then it is good that one seek at the outset to renew oneself in this faith and in this mind in a hearty and simple way, letting all created objects lie, so as to turn with the whole of one's heart and one's love to that God whom one believes to be so near within, and to love and embrace Him in faith as one's Friend and Treasure. For the rest, one deals with God as with a friend, with whom one goes about without art or ceremony, saying what one has upon the heart, and whatever love may move one to. Let faith be your ground in prayer and at all times, whereon you build, and love your guidance. Believe God just as near, just as worthy of adoration and of love, when you see or feel nothing of it, as when He gives you light and feeling; and thank Him just as heartily when you have spent the time of prayer in dryness and unwilling distraction, as when you had enjoyed much — only that you do not knowingly cause it, for to content God is a true blessedness for a loving soul.
All that God wills of you, and the observing of the times for withdrawal too, you must indeed seek punctually to attend to; but love you must choose as your guide in everything. I mean to say, that you do no thing — be it what it may — merely for form's sake out of habit, out of natural inclination, or because you must do it, but out of love to God; not just through some felt impulse of love, which you cannot give yourself, but with the pure and simple intention that you would do, leave, or suffer it so as to please your God in it, to His love and honour. This intention of love, to which one childishly rouses oneself in the beginnings, makes the least thing great, and the hardest sweet and pleasant.
Finally, love God, who has loved you in Christ, and think on nothing but how you may love Him and please Him. But do not by any means let your courage sink at the experience of your faults and failings; rather let yourself be pressed by them so much the more to forsake yourself, and to let Jesus live in you, who alone is the fountain of holiness. I greet you and both your sisters heartily, and remain
Your weak and devoted brother.
Mülheim, 25 February 1745.
German
Der dreiundsechzigste Brief.
Besondere Anweisungen wegen täglicher Absonderungen zum Gebet, und auch wegen Uebung des Gebets selber.
Herzlich geliebter Bruder!
Mein voriges mag wohl deiner Natur kein Angenehmes gewesen seyn: Allein das ist ein Beweiß, daß meine Liebe zu dir wächset; denn das ist eine schwache und bisweilen schädliche Liebe, wo mans nicht wagen darf, einander zu sagen, was vor GOtt recht ist.
— 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 letter of method, and unusually practical for these pages. Johann Peter Schmitz has evidently written asking how to arrange his day — when to withdraw for prayer, and how long. Tersteegen begins by apologising for the bluntness of an earlier letter, then gives him something close to a timetable: half an hour, two or three times a day, morning, noon and evening, fitted around his work. Then, having given the timetable, he spends the rest of the letter making sure it is not mistaken for the thing itself.
The hours, and what they are for. The practical counsel is precise and unfussy. Set the hours to suit your affairs; change them from time to time so nothing creeps in unnoticed; don't try it straight after a meal. Read something short and nourishing first if you need a way in — or skip that, if grace has already got there ahead of you. It is the advice of a man who knows that a rule kept rigidly becomes another thing to fail at.
The ground beneath the method. Then the turn: "the faith of God's inward loving presence, and the mind to be wholly His, must lie at the ground of all prayer." What follows is the letter's real subject — that one deals with God "as with a friend, with whom one goes about without art or ceremony, saying what one has upon the heart." And the test he sets is a hard one: thank Him just as heartily for an hour spent in dryness and unwilling distraction as for an hour of enjoyment, so long as you did not cause the dryness yourself.
The close. The warning he evidently thought his correspondent most needed: do not let your courage sink at the experience of your own faults. Let them press you out of yourself instead. He greets the two sisters — the same household that received the New Year's letter after their father's death, and whose brothers were asked to countersign an act of self-offering three years earlier.
A few words and echoes.
- as with a friend. Exodus 33:11 — "And the LORD spake unto Moses face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend."
- the fountain of holiness. Not a quotation but a formula of his own; cf. 1 Corinthians 1:30, "who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption."
- to content God. An older, stronger sense of content — to satisfy, to give full pleasure to — not merely to make do. The German is contentiren, i.e. zufriedenzustellen.
- affairs. His word is Affairen — a naturalised German plural (French would be affaires), meaning business, the day's work. He assumes his correspondent has a trade to keep.
- this intention of love. The Liebes-Intention: not a feeling but a settled purpose, deliberately roused, which is why he says it can be summoned "childishly" at the outset and does not depend on being felt.
- both your sisters. Anna Maria Elisabeth and Catharina Margaretha Christina Schmitz — the recipients, with him, of Briefe 24, 25, 31 and 32.
trans. Jarred Fenlason · gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdii-thiii-063 · all rights reservedEnglish translation © Jarred Fenlason · All rights reserved · gerhardtersteegen.com.