Letters · Zweiter Band · Theil III (1775)

Encouragement to the following of Jesus in the cross.

Bd II · Th III · Brief 81 · Der einundachtzigste Brief

Addressee, date, and source

Addressee — To Christina Krabbe of Mülheim. The print gives only the salutation “Hertzlich geliebte Freundin in JEsu!”; the critical edition supplies the name.
Date — Mülheim, 1747
Provenance — Translated from the 1775 first edition (Theil III, pp. 257–258), collated against the 1798/99 second edition.

The Eighty-First Letter.

Encouragement to the following of Jesus in the cross.

Dearly beloved friend in Jesus!

I greet you heartily in return, in the name of Jesus. Your little letter was truly dear to me. You do well to be simple-hearted. You may be assured of my intercession — weak, indeed, but brotherly.

Only be of good courage in God, and trust with a child’s trust in His almighty grace. God has called you with a holy and inward call. He is faithful to help you through all the testings; yes, He will do it. Your upright disposition, to will to love Jesus only and His cross — oh, how beautiful it is, how pleasing to God! He who has laid such a disposition in you will also preserve and confirm it. Then only forget courageously the world, with all its false goods and imagined pleasures! Jesus Himself wills to be your heart’s comfort, and your portion in eternity; in that let your heart rejoice, and sing confidently out of the 51st hymn: “Let this one have it here, let that one have it there — that shall you be to me, in one word, my Alone and my All (remain / become).”

Undisturbed, despise the vain thoughts and distractions that fall in upon you. What you do not deliberately will, nor harbor within you with complacency, in that you do not displease God either. You must look upon yourself as one who has been counted worthy not to remain a child of this world, but to become a child of God and of eternity. Be of good courage, my daughter, in God, to whom you belong! I remain, etc.

Mülheim, — — — — 1747.

❦

German

Der einundachtzigste Brief.

Aufmunterung zur Kreuzes-Nachfolge JEsu.

Herzlich geliebte Freundin in JEsu!

Ich grüße dich in dem Namen JEsu herzlich wieder. Dein Brieflein ist mir recht lieb gewesen.

— 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).

Translator’s notes

What this letter is. A short letter to a young woman who had written him a note, and who is called at the end “my daughter.” It is undated; the print gives only the year, with two rules standing where the day and month should be. What can be said with certainty is that she belonged to a Mülheim household Tersteegen knew closely, that the letters just before this one report the long illness and the death of the mistress of that house — he was in the room when she died, at nine in the evening, praying — and that this young woman was dead herself within about eighteen months. Nothing in the letter mentions any of it. It is simply four short paragraphs of encouragement, and its whole weight falls on one word: “courage,” three times.

A few words and echoes.

simple-hearted. Einfältig — singleness of heart, not slowness of mind; a word of praise throughout these letters.
your little letter. Brieflein — the diminutive is affectionate; she had written first.
my intercession — weak, indeed, but brotherly. The self-deprecation is the point: the prayer’s worth is in the bond, not the pray-er.
a holy and inward call. The apostolic phrase, with inward doing Tersteegen’s own work: the call is known by where it lands.
the testings. Proben — the assayer’s word, a testing that verifies rather than a trial that merely afflicts.
your upright disposition. Dein redlicher Sinn — the settled bent of the will, which he insists was put there and will be kept there.
imagined pleasures. Paired with “false goods”: the contrast is real against illusory, not innocent against wicked.
your portion. The psalm’s word for God as the share that falls to you — and the hymn that follows says the same thing in the singer’s mouth.
my Alone and my All. The hymn’s phrase, and the title he gives God everywhere in these letters.
remain / become. The print’s two endings, kept side by side — and the same pair, deliberately, in the letter’s last sentence.
fall in upon you. Einfallend — the standard word for thoughts that arrive unbidden during prayer; nothing is being blamed on her.
with complacency. Wohlgefallen — taking satisfaction in a thought, which is what turns an arrival into a consent.
counted worthy. Passive, with God unnamed as the agent: the worth is conferred, never possessed.
my daughter. The only place he calls her this — and he has just called himself her brother.
I remain, etc. The print breaks off the subscription; the formula is cut, not lost.

Cite this letter

Gerhard Tersteegen, Geistliche und erbauliche Briefe, Zweiter Band, III. Theil, Brief 81 (Solingen, 1773–75); trans. Jarred Fenlason, https://gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdii-thiii-081.html.

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