That the Tempter so gladly diverts the hunger after God into side-matters; and what is safest for the soul in this. Of working and not working.

The Sixty-Fourth Letter.

That the Tempter so gladly diverts the hunger after God into side-matters; and what is safest for the soul in this. Of working and not working.

In the grace of our dear Saviour, dearly beloved brother!

To the beloved brother's letter of the 24th of December last I have not been able to answer sooner, on account of various inward and outward hindrances that have come between; since my weak head especially, and the troubling confusions among the awakened of our time, draw me very much away from the correspondence I once kept. In our inward and our outward alike we stand under God's direction; and the more a circumstance or chance can lead us into self-divesting and self-annihilation, so much the more quietly can one follow, because the Tempter would rather lead to the contrary. Then let the Lord do with me in this too what is pleasing to Him! I do love all God's children in Him; indeed I often think that I love them the more inwardly and the more purely, the less the senses and the bodily have part in that love. Yet for all that I own it as a grace when the divine providence makes me acquainted with a soul called and given over to the upright life: there are not so very many of them in any case in this troubling time.

For the further news of the Norwegian exiles, my thanks; the Lord have mercy! May He set right what has gone astray, and lead the will of the simple, that hungers after Him, through all siftings to the goal! The Tempter is otherwise exceedingly watchful to lead this hunger, awakened by God, if not into gross sins, yet into all manner of side-matters, show, and false spirituality, so that one may squander time and strength upon beating the air: these and the like are still fairly gross; some things come forward now more plausibly. Whatever is singular, whatever is conspicuous, whatever leads outward, must at all times be suspect to us. Indeed I already count it a dangerous weakness or curiosity when one thinks oneself obliged to examine the various movements toward good that arise, and to search out and pass judgment on the ways of other minds: enough, that we know our own way, the way God will lead us. One loves all that is good for the sake of its origin; but one remains turned inward, lest by too close an inspection of others' leadings — good ones too — one fall away from God's leading over oneself; as can easily happen with those not well established, especially in a time of inward dryness and trial. Christ's word I still hear often: What is that to thee? follow thou me.

I had to smile in reading that the good Count driven out of Sweden could not bear either the word of the Little Kempis: Ama nesciri (Be glad to be unknown) — for in Amsterdam and those parts they went at this same word just so, though only some of them. We all want to be something, we want to shine; that our father Adam bequeathed us. Christ's mind, which is to be in us also (Phil. 2:5–8), was quite otherwise; and in the first thirty years of His life on earth He meant chiefly to teach us just this one word, Ama nesciri: it sounds strange, therefore, that the same should be against Christ's teaching. But I am used to answering such contradictions with silence; otherwise the cunning Tempter would have kept me busy without end. For souls given over to the inward life must make themselves ready for contradiction from good and bad alike: but a Mary sitting at Jesus' feet does not defend herself; the Saviour Himself takes it up for her. O how I thank my Merciful One that in the earlier years of my awakening He kept me from all acquaintance, especially with new sects, of which I have since seen many, and very plausible ones.

That the dear brother should moreover desire my judgment upon some circumstances of his leading — that is well enough on his side, and not contrary to the words: Should not a people seek unto their God? Isaiah 8:19. Only on my side I do not presume to be a teacher or leader of other souls. I am an ignorant, weak child, that has and knows nothing but what is given me in the present. I may not indeed deny God's grace; I know too that I have borne witness according to the truth of His inward ways in the little I have written of them: but to teach or to lead others, for that I am too small. It has the appearance, indeed, as though I went to work as such a one; but no such thing, God be praised, enters my mind. I speak and write as providence brings it, when I cannot get past it so; and then I say my thoughts, as one child might to another. Twenty years ago and more I should sooner have thought I had grace for it than now. Yet I will, as a brother, say simply what is given me.

On the point of bodily work, I believe that it is the will of God, which a Christian should find himself willing to do from the heart (Eph. 6:6–7): I believe that it not only does the inward no harm, but, performed in due order, can be a furtherance to it. It can preserve us from sloth, from gloomy sadness, from idle curiosity and manifold distractions; and on the other hand give much occasion for humility, for the denial of self-will and of other natural corruptions, and so be a furtherance toward prayer and toward walking in the presence of God.

Toilsome work is indeed a fruit of the Fall, as is all the inward and outward cross and hardship of this life: but all this God's eternal wisdom has so blessed to us through Christ that it becomes not a hurtful poison, but a medicine — bitter, yet wholesome — when we use it according to His ordinance; as then our eating and drinking too, and whatever else we do in natural things, is to be done in the name of Christ, and so under blessing. Indeed, with Christians who live supernaturally, work — and whatever else they do or suffer in the natural way — is no longer so merely natural, common and contemptible a thing; it is and becomes sanctified through Christ also, and made into a spiritual matter of divine service.

Only then we must also certainly no longer do our things in unbelief, because we will or must have it so; as though God had need of our work — no, indeed not. He can well feed us without bread, and bestow bread without work. Of the greed for money, and of hoarding against the future, I will not even say anything. Neither should we, where we are otherwise free, work as though we stood under the Egyptian taskmasters. The tender spirit of discipline does not allow nature's vehemence, its clinging, its excess, nor the falling of the whole man upon the outward. We are to do our things as sent to them by God, in childlike obedience, with a still, detached frame of mind that cleaves to God: then one does it to the Lord, and no longer to oneself or to men, and it is a real service of God. This doing it to the Lord makes all that we do acceptable to God: otherwise our best avails nothing, were it the most devout of inward or outward performances. But the simpler a work is, and the less it partakes of vanity, the better it suits Christians of the heart.

It is needless to remark that not only the incapable, but also those who by God's will and call employ their time and strength in the spiritual service of their neighbour, are to be excepted from this otherwise divine ordinance. Only this distinction I must bring in: that although work is to be received as a general and ordinary way and will of God, I do not on that account judge others who do not work — who has set me over it? God is free to lead some extraordinarily: this He has done, and He can do it still. If only a man does not walk disorderly, and does not wish to set his particular leading before others as a doctrine or a special holiness, then I can look upon such with a wholly innocent eye, and leave them standing to their own Lord. I know too that the inward state, and the workings in the soul, may well for a time make one unfit for outward work and call one away from it; which one leaves to particular examination. A soul may well be set inwardly into so earnest a labour or conflict that the whole man seems needed for it for the time. Where extraordinary workings of grace and gifts are experienced, it goes almost the same way. Or, where at the first inward communications soul and spirit are not yet at all divided, there almost everything out of the ordinary seems to cause the tender mind a hindrance and a distraction: but such states are not wont to last so; meanwhile the soul there can do no otherwise than follow God and trust Him, and others must use discretion in the matter.

As concerns now the teachings the dear brother has written down and communicated to me: these are, in my judgment, certainly of the Spirit of truth, and were impressed upon the mind not without unction; the inward enlargement and quieting felt with them are proof enough that he has pleased God in it. But since in these his not-working was also approved, the dear brother must not think that this contradicts the thoughts I have brought forward about bodily work. By no means! for on the one hand an inward soul loves and means God heartily, and purely according to the measure of her state; this inward form, wrought in her by God, pleases the Lord greatly; He approves it, and this testimony, or approbation, the soul often feels with much relish. And because the inward soul, in this her inward form pleasing to God, does all and leaves all as before His face, it seems to her that the Lord approves also all her doing and leaving; and so indeed it is: for because her eye is single, her whole body becomes full of light. But no infallible conclusion is to be drawn from this, that if such a soul did some outward thing otherwise, she would then not please God just as much. Many holy souls among the Roman Catholics have done things which we could not do with a quiet mind; yet God approved and ratified their doing to them, as they believed, by a true testimony: to them, not to me; and not for their doing's sake, but for the sake of their God-loving and God-meaning frame of mind. Unto the pure all things are pure. He that eateth, says Paul, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks; and he that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and giveth God thanks. Rom. 14:6. So also with other side-matters of the kind. The Lord looks upon the ground and the main matter; if that is right, then He readily calls all the rest good, when it is truly done to Him. But when something is done with inward doubt or contradiction, then it is not done to Him, but is evil, because it is not done of faith; granted that the thing in itself were not so evil.

Such condescensions of God as were first mentioned are needful for our sakes: either because He sees that our inward part is still so tender that for the time it might take harm from this or that thing — therefore He calls us off from something that is harmless in itself, only because we are weak, and He gladly grants us a time to become grounded and rooted; or else because His wisdom sees that we stand so preoccupied in some matter that it would confuse us and hinder us in the main thing, were we pressed to do it otherwise, or to believe otherwise than we do. But one must not on this account fall into the thought that the inward life and leading is, after all, a dangerous or at any rate an uncertain thing, if one cannot build upon it more surely. O yes! one can build upon it entirely: it is truth and no lie, how and what the unction teaches us; only we are to abide by it without scruple. She teaches us to deny world, creature and self-propriety; she teaches us to look upon God, to worship, to love and to mean Him; that she teaches and works. She teaches also how we are to perform all outward and natural things, but not at all times what we are to do and to leave; this last may perhaps befall pure and rare souls now and then: commonly it is needless. God is concerned about the main matter: in the remaining chief things we find clear instruction in the letter of Scripture. For the rest, God often leaves it to us as a fair exercise of humility and of faith that we should not have so absolute a certainty of His will in every particular; and those who walk warily do not desire such certainty either: they look to God, and not to their own doing, to seek their support or their righteousness in it.

But chiefly, as I have already noted above, God can lead in such side-matters and circumstances one way at one time and otherwise at another, while the main matter meanwhile remains unchanged and firm; whereon I nevertheless remark in passing, that the soul, even in outward and side-matters, should not so easily undertake a marked change in what she has hitherto known, unless God's good pleasure in it has become clear to her either in inward stillness before God, or through the counsel of an enlightened person; because in a time of inward trial, dryness and darkness, when the soul is always suspecting that she may have failed somewhere, or may not be doing right in one thing or another, the Tempter is quick to be after it, to lead the fretting mind to all manner of changes, and sometimes to weighty ones; whereby many a noble soul has already taken great harm, or has even torn herself away from a close leading of God. Only, as concerns bodily work, there one has no need of a new certainty of the divine will; but since it is an expressed and clear will of God, it is enough if one has outwardly the ability and the opportunity, and inwardly the freedom for it; in which case a soul does well to take it in hand. But to apply the one with the other to the dear brother's condition and leading, I will heartily commend and leave to the Spirit of grace.

Not only the apostle Paul, but all the saints before and after him, have practised work and held it serviceable. One cannot read, for example, the Lives of the Fathers in the Desert without being fully convinced of it: not to mention many other enlightened souls who have found blessing and furtherance for their inward part in outward work. Were I to set my own little experience beside it, I must confess that I have many times felt profit, inward approbation and the divine presence under work. Yes indeed — I have also been scattered, wearied and darkened under it; but for that my own disorder was to blame, and not the work: for the rest, there were discovered to me under it and beside it many impure powers of nature which apart from it I should perhaps not have recognised so. The Holy Spirit of Jesus made use of my outward work as a right exercise and school. Now a piece of work would be too contemptible for nature; now self-complacency and pleasure stirred, when I did it well, or a thing otherwise went as I wished; now displeasure and vexation, when I was hindered, or my work would not go according to my own will, etc. etc. There the Master set me right, and the strength of nature into death. Now I would be diligent in order to make a living; then it was said: Work for Me, and not for your living. Then nature would lay itself on the lazy side, since it was to have nothing out of it after all: but the Leader's eye discovered the rogue. I was to bring the body into subjection, and out of love to serve so much the more willingly. With the trade in which I first stood it would not go so well (something else may well have been wanting too), and therefore I laid it down as early as 1719, and learned a handicraft, which I plied so long until in part I had no strength left for it, and in part was given enough to do by providence with writing and otherwise. Now I still have such a small by-work, namely that I prepare simple medicines (of which I understand something), which needy sick folk send to fetch from me. This business is indeed somewhat irregular for me, since one must stand ready to serve whenever anyone comes; but I set much store by it that a soul called to the inward life, and especially one living solitary, should keep an ordered time, where possible, for working, for particular prayer, for eating and for sleeping. This service of the sick also demands at times somewhat too much attention; but since I was led into it without and against my seeking, and providence so orders it that I have been able to give it away for nothing, whereby others believe themselves served, I may not yet give it up altogether.

For the rest — whether we do this or that, work somewhat with our hands or not — it must stand at what was impressed upon the dear brother under No. 7 in the teachings he wrote down, namely: My work is nothing else than to look upon God, to worship Him and to serve Him; for my body's need my Lord cares. This is our Ergon (main work), the outward our Perergon (by-work); or, better said: this main work is ever more to penetrate all our outward, to ensoul it, and to make it too part of the main work; to which end may our whole remain given over to the Lord!

I confess that I write at length: I thought of nothing less when I began. The matter led me so from one thing to another. The dear brother can prove it all, and keep from it what seems good to him. May the unction teach and lead us into all the perfect will of God!

To dear brother T., whom I greet heartily, I send herewith the engravings requested. —

Now I break off herewith, with hearty greeting and commendation to the dear brother's remembrance before God; I greet also, unknown to them, his household: the Lord be with you, among you and in you! Amen. — — Those who know me in Sweden I greet likewise as occasion serves, and remain, through grace,

The dear brother's

Mülheim, 1 April 1745.

weak fellow-brother.

German

Der vierundsechzigste Brief.

Daß der Versucher den Hunger nach Gott so gern auf Neben-Sachen führe; und was für die Seele das sicherste dabei. Vom Arbeiten und nicht Arbeiten.

In der Gnade unsers theuren Heilandes herzlich geliebter Bruder!

Auf des geliebten Bruders Zuschreiben vom 24ten Decembr. a. p. habe nicht ehender können antworten, wegen mancherlei zwischen gekommenen inneren und äußeren Verhinderungen; da sonderlich mein schwaches Haupt, und die bedenkliche Confußionen unter den Erweckten unserer Zeit mich sehr vom gehabten Briefwechsel abziehen.

— 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).