Encouragement to the following of Jesus in the cross.

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.

Be of good courage. The word frames everything. "Only be of good courage in God, and trust with a child's trust in His almighty grace." Then, in the middle, "sing confidently"; and at the end, "Be of good courage, my daughter, in God, to whom you belong." Between those three the argument is a single movement: what you already have is not yours but given, and therefore it will hold. "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." Her own sincerity is not treated as her achievement — "He who has laid such a disposition in you will also preserve and confirm it." That sentence is the letter in miniature, and it is addressed to someone who evidently feared that her resolve would not last.

You do well to be simple-hearted. The praise in the second sentence is worth pausing on, because the word does not mean what it looks like. Einfältig is not "simple" in the sense of slow; it is singleness of heart, guilelessness, the opposite of a mind divided against itself. She had apparently written something self-deprecating; his reply is that the very thing she is apologizing for is the thing to keep. And he answers her from below rather than above: he offers her his intercession, "weak, indeed, but brotherly" — a spiritual father calling himself her brother in the same breath in which he will call her his daughter.

The hymn with two endings. The centre of the letter is a quotation from his own hymnbook: 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. And then something the old print does that no modern edition reproduces: it sets two different final verbs, one above the other inside a single large bracket — "remain" and "become" — offering both as equally right. The printer would not choose, and neither will this edition. It is hard not to notice that the letter's last paragraph uses the same two verbs in the same order: you are counted worthy "not to remain a child of this world, but to become a child of God and of eternity." Whether the compositor was reporting an honest variant in the hymn or keeping both because the letter turns on the pair, the doubling is the most alive thing on the page.

What is not your fault. The last paragraph is pastoral care of a very specific kind, and it is the reason letters like this survived to be printed. She is troubled by thoughts she does not want. His answer distinguishes the arriving thought from the consenting will: "Undisturbed, despise the vain thoughts and distractions that fall in upon you. What you do not deliberately will, nor harbour within you with complacency, in that you do not displease God either." The relief on offer is exact — not you are not troubled, but being troubled is not the same as consenting. Then the closing sentence, which gives her both a father and a place to stand: "Be of good courage, my daughter, in God, to whom you belong."

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.