That in the present one must do and suffer all things to God, and must not wait for the change of this or that circumstance.

The Seventy-Fifth Letter.

That in the present one must do and suffer all things to God, and must not wait for the change of this or that circumstance.

In the grace of Jesus, dearly beloved brother!

Your welcome letter of the 25th of March I received rather late, yet duly. Its contents, indeed, I should otherwise — according to God’s will — have wished more cheering, for I see from it your burdensome bodily constitution. — —

The one thing with the other affects me, and I take heartfelt part in your sufferings and burdens; I am also often reminded to offer up most inwardly both these your sufferings and burdens, and in particular the state of your mind, to our dearest Jesus, the possessing Lord and God of our heart; that He may keep you under and in it all by His favorable nearness, and further you, and lead you out of it, to His praise! This the Lord can do, and this the Lord will do; and the heart’s children should indeed never forget that their all-governing Father, in all that He lets befall them, has nothing else in view but only this: that He may make them little and pure, and capable of His most inward union. What one cannot alter or escape, then, one must take confidently from His Father’s hand and direction; do all and suffer all to Him alone, as well and as quietly as one can; commit and entrust oneself and one’s affairs to Him in childlike wise; and amid all unrest and multiplicity keep short, abiding in the present, and practice and preserve as best one may the heart’s recollection and devotion. For this is a deceit which the enemy slips in, when one thinks that one cannot rightly serve God according to one’s inward call until one were out of these or those present circumstances — whereas we cannot yet get out of them; whereby it then comes to pass that one only doubles one’s burden, grows sullen and darkened, and does not gain from the present the right profit according to God’s intent, and yet must hold out in it.

We should as much as possible avoid and shun all multiplicity and every occasion of dissipation and distraction; but that is not granted at all times, nor to every one. We must pass through many a school; and there one must do as has been said.

To do all things to God with an inward, pure intent — that is the true gold-maker’s art, whereby every bit of mire (if I may so speak) is turned under our hand into the finest gold of a true service of God, and the bitterest wormwood into sweet sugar. Dear necessity has brought me upon this track these many years, my brother! though I am still but a bungler at it. Confidently, then — let us only venture ourselves upon it! What does it matter about us? If only our God and Friend be contented, and be also loved and honored in us, then let it go over the old ass as it will. May the spirit, under all this, only press and sink itself so much the more inwardly into its Origin, until the fetters of this wretched body and life fall wholly away!

But now I write too much again, out of love. I should and would hereby only report, both to you and to your mother, as also to the dear Brother N. at Frankfurt, that it has pleased God to release the dear Brother H., on the thirteenth of this month at ten o’clock in the evening, after an illness of a quarter of a year, out of the body’s prison by a believing death. — —

Mülheim, the 30th of August, 1746.

NB. Here now follows a further circumstantial report of the illness, etc., of this brother; of which, however, that we may not detain the reader with needless repetitions, we have only these two weighty utterances still to communicate, which the blessed departed also made in his illness, and which are not to be found in the two preceding letters, namely: “There is nothing more between God and my soul”; and: “I believe, when this burdensome, wretched body shall have fallen away, that then my spirit will draw very, yea very near to God.”

German

Der fünfundsiebzigste Brief.

Daß man im Gegenwärtigen alles GOtte thun und leiden, und nicht auf die Veränderung dieser oder jener Umstände warten müsse.

In der Gnade JEsu herzlich geliebter Bruder!

Dein angenehmes Schreiben vom 25ten Martii habe ziemlich spät, dennoch richtig erhalten: Den Inhalt desselben hätte zwar sonst, nach GOttes Willen erfreulicher gewünschet, denn ich sehe daraus deine beschwerliche Leibes-Constitution.

— 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).