Thoughts concerning one departed. In what manner each must recognize his call, and attain the goal of his calling.

What this letter is. A death had come suddenly this time — no quarter-year sickbed, no deathbed Amens. The friend N. of the earlier letters (his name was Hubert Rahr) was gone before word could travel twice, and his widow's letter by post crossed the slower news. Tersteegen writes back to the same Krefeld correspondent a letter of two movements: a few lines of consolation, and then — because the death of a man mid-calling raises the question — the collection's shortest and clearest teaching on what a calling is.

The consolation. It is one sentence long, and it is enough: "The eternal Love will deal well with him." What follows widens it: in the Father's house are many mansions, and in a great house not all vessels are of one kind and dignity — yet all have their use. The dead man "had his good, which is to be loved, esteemed, and followed"; and a child of God cannot measure himself by another in all points. The consolation and the caution are the same doctrine: God's house has room for unequal vessels, so neither despise the smaller nor envy the greater.

The doctrine of the call. How does anyone recognize his call? The letter's answer is characteristically inward: keep up the exercise of prayer and the quiet observing of the heart, and the call — and the goal of the calling — will make itself known. The goal must be reached, "if the spirit is ever to come to rest in time and eternity"; one man reaches rest with less, because his call and capacity — his hunger, the letter says — does not stretch so far; the higher the call, the greater the privilege and the heavier the obligations. And even attainment is no license to halt: were the goal reached before the body's dissolution, there would be no standing still, only a still greater capacity — "for God is infinite, and His communication of Himself enlarges the heart ever more."

The breaking-off. Then the disarming close that is pure Tersteegen: "But I am talking on somewhat childishly here. I meant only to say this much: we must be faithful toward God, and not regulate ourselves too exactly by the states of others." The letter ends with place and date and no signature at all — as if the last sentence had already signed it.

A few words and echoes.

• the eternal Love will deal well with him. The whole consolation; everything after it is commentary.
• many mansions. John 14:2 — the room in the Father's house for unequal souls.
• not all vessels… of one kind and dignity. 2 Timothy 2:20 — the great house with vessels of gold, silver, wood, and earth; "yet all have their use."
• the goal of his calling. Philippians 3:14 — the mark and the prize of the high calling; the word the argument-title puts over the whole letter.
• the higher the call, the higher the obligations. Luke 12:48 — to whom much is given, of him much required.
• capacity or hunger. Fähigkeit oder Hunger — the measure of a soul's call is its receptivity, named here with Tersteegen's plainest word for it.
• the quiet observing of the heart. Stille Wahrnehmung des Herzens — the inward watchfulness by which the call is heard at all.
• no standing still. Even attainment enlarges: "for God is infinite" — the letter's deepest sentence, dropped almost in passing before he calls it all childish talk.