How the trials and sufferings of living together are to be regarded, and made use of.
Addressee, date, and source
The Sixty-Sixth Letter.
How the trials and sufferings of living together are to be regarded, and made use of.
In the grace of Jesus, much-beloved sister!
Your little letters are always welcome to me, even when they are little letters of complaint; I then simply send them on to the dearest Savior, who is glad to hear even our complaining, if only we do not complain about Him and grow mistrustful: for that He cannot gladly hear, and I can scarcely bear it either, that souls to whom He has done so much as He has done to us should still call His infinite goodness into doubt.
You complain about N. N. But how would you and I ever become gentle, pliant, and will-less, if God had no servants who pressed and bent us a little, and if everything went according to wish? I must sometimes look at you with a smiling mien, that you can grieve and perplex yourself so heartily when one thing after another comes like this, assailing and disturbing you. You dear child! Can you not, then, also greet such occurrences with a smiling mien? Seeing that God’s eternal wisdom can find such right plasters for your wounds, and knows how to strike you just where you have life. Let God work! Do not take these things so much upon yourself, that your body may not be so much worn down. It is bad enough that, in so small a little band as you are there, there should still be anything to complain of: you ought rightly to be choice souls. Well, to that it must yet come; only let yourself be made ready! the others must have their turn too. Or shall I one day complain with you? I know a man who gets a thousand little crosses to carry from other souls, who indeed at times grieves himself sick because others are not so devout as he would gladly have them; or because others do not believe and follow what he deems to be good, until his own folly and misery come to his mind; whereupon he loses the one with the other in the abyss of the infinite love of God, and sings a merry little song to close. But no! you want to run off, and retire (as you write) into a rock-cleft. Well then! I will come along; only choose the right rock-cleft (1 Corinthians 10:4), namely Christ; and there you can then dwell as a little dove, and let your voice be heard: as it stands in Song of Solomon 2:14. — —
I greet you heartily, together with brother and sister, and from other acquaintances here as well. May Jesus live in your heart! — to whom, commending you from the ground of my heart, I remain
Your devoted weak fellow-brother.
Mülheim, the 8th of July, 1745.
German
Der sechsundsechzigste Brief.
Wie man die Proben und Leiden im Beisammenwohnen ansehen, und sich derer bedienen müsse.
In der Gnade JEsu vielgeliebte Schwester!
Deine Brieflein sind mir immer angenehm, wann es auch Klag-Brieflein sind; ich schicke sie dann nur weiter zum liebsten Heiland, der auch unser Klagen gern anhöret, wann wir nur nicht über Ihn klagen, und mißtrauisch sind: Denn das kan Er nicht gerne hören, und ich kans auch fast nicht tragen …
— 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 to the young sister of the Schmitz household — the family whose brother received the letter of practical counsel at Brief 63, and to whom Tersteegen had written once before (Brief 59). She has written complaining: about a person the print discreetly reduces to “N. N.,” and about the small daily frictions of a fellowship living close together. The answer is one of the most playful letters in the collection, and its good humor is itself the counsel: complaint-letters are welcome, he says, so long as the complaining never turns against God Himself — he simply forwards them “to the dearest Savior, who is glad to hear even our complaining.”
“I know a man.” Halfway through, the counselor steps into the dock himself, in the apostle’s third person: a man who “gets a thousand little crosses to carry from other souls,” who at times grieves himself sick that others are not as devout as he would have them — until his own folly comes to mind, and he loses the one with the other in the abyss of the infinite love of God, “and sings a merry little song to close.” The self-portrait does double duty: it keeps the letter’s charge honest, and it shows her the way out of grieving — not self-correction but self-forgetting in the love of God.
A few words and echoes.
- little letters of complaint. Klag-Brieflein — her own letters, affectionately diminished; welcome, he says, so long as we “do not complain about Him and grow mistrustful.”
- will-less. Willenlos — not listlessness but the surrender of self-will, the aim of the whole discipline; the frictions of common life are God’s instruments for it.
- a smiling mien. Mit lächlender Miene — twice: how he looks at her grieving, and how she is to greet the next vexation.
- plasters on your wounds. God’s wisdom as physician, dressing wounds and knowing “just where you have life” — where the touch is felt most.
- the little band. Häuflein — the small fellowship of the household; “you ought rightly to be choice souls,” and the making-ready is exactly what the frictions are for.
- I know a man. The apostle’s turn of phrase (2 Corinthians 12:2) borrowed for a rueful self-portrait.
- the rock-cleft. Her image, corrected in the choosing: “that Rock was Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:4); the dove in the clefts of the rock whose voice is heard (Song of Solomon 2:14).
- the dash. The “— —” after the Song citation is the old edition’s own mark where its compiler shortened the letter; nothing survives of what was cut.
trans. Jarred Fenlason · gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdii-thiii-066 · all rights reservedEnglish translation © Jarred Fenlason · All rights reserved · gerhardtersteegen.com.