How the trials and sufferings of living together are to be regarded, and made use of.

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 humour 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 Saviour, who is glad to hear even our complaining."

The trials of living together. The title says the trials are to be used, and the letter shows how. How would you and I ever become gentle, pliant, and will-less, he asks, "if God had no servants who pressed and bent us a little"? The people who chafe us are doing God's work on us. Hence the counsel that gives the letter its face: meet such occurrences "with a smiling mien" — the same smiling mien with which he confesses he must sometimes look at her grieving. God's eternal wisdom "can find such right plasters for your wounds, and knows how to strike you just where you have life." The practical corollary is bodily: do not take things so much to heart that the body is worn down by them.

"I know a man." Halfway through, the counsellor 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.

The rock-cleft. She had written that she wanted to run off and hide in a cleft of the rock. He takes her image and goes with it: "Well then! I will come along; only choose the right rock-cleft (1 Corinthians 10:4), namely Christ" — and there, in the words of the Song, she can dwell as a little dove and let her voice be heard (Song of Solomon 2:14). The dash that follows marks a cut made by the old edition's compiler; what stood there is lost. The close gathers the whole household — brother, sister, the friends nearby — into one greeting, and ends where the letter began, with Jesus living in the heart.

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.