To a soul assailed by all manner of evil thoughts and images.

What this letter is. Pastoral counsel to a woman who has been "a long while in anxieties," plagued by intrusive evil thoughts and images — the affliction the old confessors knew well and this letter treats with striking gentleness and, at one point, striking modernity. It opens with a blessing set as its own line — "May Jesus bless you, and give you peace in Him!" — and never once scolds.

The frame: love, not displeasure. The Saviour is "infinitely more compassionate than I, poor man, am" — and yet it is He who lays these little crosses on. The apparent contradiction is the letter's first lesson: He does it out of love, and would not do it were it not indispensably necessary; "He takes no pleasure in our affliction." Our corruption is deep and manifold, and He must use all manner of ways and means; since we understand none of it, the one wise course is to let Him work, take everything from His hand in simple love, and believe that under His governance all things must serve us for the best. Our part shrinks to four verbs: love Him, cleave to Him, pray much, and gladly do, leave, and suffer what pleases Him — "the rest belongs to Him."

The counsel on the thoughts themselves. Suffer the anxieties gladly and for love of Him — "in this way you can now please God best." Then the sentence that carries the letter's scale of values: to bear a little cross, or even once to break one's own mind and will for God's sake, "is more pleasing to God than to have revelations." The images in the head are no concern of hers so long as she takes no pleasure in them: forget them, despise them — or carry them, themselves a little cross, with calm and pliancy. Taking fright at them "is not worth the trouble." And then the remarkable diagnostic charity: such frightful imaginations "may well arise from a mere disorder of body and blood" — the darkness of the mind may be physiology, not sin. He who walks in the dark fancies he sees now this, now that; when light comes, nothing of it is there.

The close. God is near even in the dark — the psalm under the sentence says the darkness and the light are both alike to Him — and He "looks on to see how we do, and whether we will hold out?" So: walk on in simplicity, in faith in this His nearness, thinking more of Him than of ourselves. The greeting reaches her household and a discreetly unnamed "Frau N.," for whom the letter wishes its whole doctrine in one clause — the grace to forget herself, and to be occupied only with Him who comes so near in the heart, "to love us, to visit us, and to prepare us after His own heart." The dash before the subscription marks a cut made by the old edition's compiler; what stood there is lost. He signs, uniquely in these letters, "Your affectionate fellow-pilgrim."

A few words and echoes.

• anxieties. Beängstigungen — the distresses of fear; the letter's word for her whole state, suffered rather than argued with.
• little crosses. Kreuzgens — the diminutive that runs through these letters to the sisters: real crosses, but child-sized, and laid on by love.
• more pleasing than revelations. The Quietist scale of values in one clause: one act of broken self-will outweighs any quantity of extraordinary experience.
• a mere disorder of body and blood. Eine bloße Verstellung des Leibes und Geblüts — the letter's pastoral realism: the horrors may be humoral, a matter for patience rather than despair.
• walking in the dark. The image that binds it: the one who walks in darkness fancies he sees things; light shows nothing there; and God is near in the dark — "the darkness and the light are both alike to thee."
• whether we will hold out? The question mark is the letter's own: God looking on, not as examiner but as the father watching the child's steps.
• fellow-pilgrim. Mitpilger — the subscription's word, and the letter's stance throughout: counsel from alongside, not from above.