A brotherly letter of awakening.

What this letter is. The shortest letter in this part — a page and a half of print — and the title the old edition gave it says everything: a brotherly letter of awakening. No crisis prompts it; the brother has simply been often on Tersteegen's mind, and a traveler offers the occasion. What arrives is not news but questions — the kind an old friend asks precisely because no one else will.

The five questions. How goes it on the pilgrim way? Do we still keep the blessed goal unwaveringly in view? Do we grow faint or disheartened in the night, the cold, and other hardship? Do we torment ourselves — and here the letter breaks into French, avec un terreur panique & soucy inutile, "with a vain fear and useless care" — over our weakness and the enemies' power? Or do we trust it to Him who has called us? The last question answers the other four; the calling is God's, and so is the carrying-through. The "we" is the letter's kindness: the examiner stands inside his own examination.

The courtesy and the affection. The letter addresses its recipient the old courteous way, in the third person — "Will the dear brother bring me answer by word of mouth, it will be so much the dearer to me"; "I love him, and promise myself the very same from the dear brother's side." (The him is the living friend addressed, not the dead brother of the previous letters — the old convention reads strangely now, and is worth the moment it takes to hear it rightly.) Between the two sentences stands the excuse for the long silence: the sickness and departure of Brother H. had taken all his time and strength — the deathbed of the letters before this one. "For it seems to me we must by no means become strangers to one another."

The close. One line of counsel — "Only let our heart be wholly for God, and also childlike and open toward one another!" — and then, across a dash where the old editor shortened the letter, the wish that closed the deathbed letter too: "May Jesus reign and live fully in us!" No signature; place and date carry the farewell.

A few words and echoes.

• a letter of awakening. Aufweckungs-Schreiben — the Pietist word for the rousing of a soul that is not asleep so much as drowsy; the whole letter is five questions doing that work.
• the pilgrim way. The road-question that opens every honest examination: not "how are you," but "how goes it on the way?"
• avec un terreur panique & soucy inutile. The French of polite culture pressed into spiritual service — a panic terror and a useless care; the old editor added the German gloss in parentheses, and the print keeps both.
• the enemies' power. Plural — the old reckoning of the soul's adversaries; the question refuses to name them more exactly than fear does.
• Him who has called us. 1 Corinthians 1:9 — "God is faithful, by whom ye were called": the letter's one anchor, and the answer to its four anxious questions.
• we must by no means become strangers. The letter's plainest sentence, and its reason for existing.
• May Jesus reign and live fully in us! The wish repeated from the deathbed report — what was prayed over the dying is prayed here over the living.