An edifying report of a sick brother.

What this letter is. Alone in this part of the collection, this letter counsels nothing and asks nothing. It is a bulletin, written "in the patient's room," to a brother in Krefeld and the circle around him, about a dying man they all loved. The patient — "Brother H." — was Wilhelm Hoffmann; a later letter will carry the news of his death, a fortnight on. Tersteegen the letter-writer here is also Tersteegen the sometime medical man, and the first paragraph is clinical without flinching: the sore has mortified piece by piece, the whole has become one great wound a full sheet of paper could hardly cover, and one may as well call it gangrene — the old German name is der kalte Brand, "the cold fire." It smells so foul that "one must take heart to lay it open." Then the dash, and the sentence the whole letter stands on: "We do not know what the Lord intends."

The deathbed. The second paragraph turns from the wound to the man, and becomes a little gallery of last sayings, each introduced with the plain machinery of testimony — I asked, he answered, he said at another time. Asked whether he longs for "the hour of his dissolution" because of the pain, he says no: only to be freed from the hindrance and burden of the wretched body. He blesses "the Triune Being of Love." Read verses of the Seventy-First Psalm, he takes them for his own, and gives his credo in seven words: "I believe that God is my God." The fear that had all his life been "so peculiarly his own" — the Lord has delivered him from it, and he wants the thanks shared.

The exchange about Job. The letter's one small argument is the most moving thing in it. The dying man scruples: David and Job complained of their sufferings — surely I may not do the same? Tersteegen's answer runs the scruple through and out the other side: you and I have less cause to complain than they — Job had lived righteously, and so could not straightway compose himself; we have no righteousness at all. At which the sick man began to weep, and said: "Away with one's own righteousness!" The comfort offered a dying man is, of all things, the doctrine of justification — and he receives it as comfort.

The farewell. The last paragraph is leave-taking in the old full sense: he "takes his leave of you for the blessed eternity, where he hopes to find you again before God's face." The closing wish gathers the letter's two Scriptures — the Author and Finisher of faith, and the hope of mercy "unto eternal life" — and the print itself cites Jude's verses under the words. The subscription is pure Tersteegen: not father, not director, but "Your, and the others', lowly member."

A few words and echoes.

• the sore… gangrene. Der Schade… der kalte Brand — the period's name for gangrene, literally "the cold fire"; the report is exact, not squeamish.
• his dissolution. Auflösung — the old dying-language: death as an unbinding and loosing of the mortal knot, waited for "with humble trust."
• the Triune Being of Love. Das Dreieinige Liebes-Wesen — the dying man's doxology, in the letter's own coinage-register.
• God is my God. The Seventy-First Psalm applied to himself — the psalm of old age and last trust: "Thou, which hast shewed me great and sore troubles, shalt quicken me again."
• could not straightway compose himself. Sich nicht stracks finden — Job, being righteous, could not at once come to terms with his suffering; the weightier for being said to a man with no righteousness left to lean on.
• Away with one's own righteousness! The letter's cry — justification by grace, wept out on a deathbed.
• the Author and Finisher of faith. Hebrews 12:2 — the wish that faith be kept "in this faith unto the end."
• our sojourning. Fremdlingschaft — strangership: the days that remain are the days of a pilgrim people, and the hope at their end is "the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life" (Jude 21, the print's own citation).