To an anxious soul; to quiet her by holding before her the love of Jesus.

What this letter is. A letter to a frightened woman whose name is lost. She had written — or someone had written for her — about attacks of dread, and this is the answer: one paragraph, undated except for the year, and almost every sentence of it drawn from a single chapter of John. It is the shortest kind of pastoral letter and one of the surest, because it does not argue her out of the fear. It re-describes what the fear is for.

It is not out of hatred. The first sentence disposes of the thing she must have suspected: "It is not out of hatred, but out of love, that God lets such anxieties come upon you." Then the reading of her situation, offered as an observation rather than a verdict — "I perceive that He means to draw your soul with power away from the world to Himself: O what grace!" The fright is not evidence against her; it is evidence of being wanted.

The dog and the shepherd. Then the image the letter turns on, and it is a countryman's image, not a preacher's. "The dog may well frighten the little sheep and drive them, but he may not devour them nor do them harm." The dog is permitted a great deal and forbidden the one thing that matters; and the next sentence makes the application exact — "This fear, sent to you by God, is likewise meant only to drive you to the Shepherd." The same verb does both jobs: the dog drives, and what it drives her to is the one who "will surely preserve you in distress and in death." In the old print, one word in that sentence is set with the letters spaced apart so that it stands off the page — fear itself. The printer put the emphasis exactly where the argument turns.

Run to Him. What follows is the letter's engine, three short clauses with the same shape: Run to Him, for He loves you. Run to Him, for He calls you. Run to Him, and forsake the deceit of this world, for Jesus alone gives life and contentment. Then the reason underneath all three, straight out of the tenth chapter of John: "He is the good Shepherd, who in ardent love laid down His life for you, His little sheep." And a rhetorical question with a shrug in it that no translation quite catches — only think what He has not done and suffered for you! — meaning, of course, that there is nothing He has not done. "To seek you and me, He came down from heaven."

Do not be afraid. The close gathers the whole thing into four flat sentences. He will hold her in his prayers — "I hope to enclose you also in my intercession," a jeweller's word, to set a stone in its setting. Then: "Do not be afraid; God does not hate you." Then the counsel that is really the letter's summary, and the second place the old print raises its voice, setting the divine name in spaced capitals: "Think nothing evil of the good God, but only good, and remain faithful to His call unto death." The last phrase is the promise to the church at Smyrna, spoken to one frightened woman in Mülheim. And he signs himself not her teacher but her intercessor.

A few words and echoes.

• anxieties. Beängstigungen — the constricting, breath-tightening dread; the same root as the "anxious soul" of the heading.
• with power. Mit Macht — God is not coaxing her away from the world but pulling.
• the dog. The shepherd's dog, permitted to frighten and drive and forbidden to harm — and it is a dog, not a wolf, which is the whole point.
• drive. One verb for what the dog does and for what the fear does: it moves her, and only in one direction.
• fear. The word the old printer spaced out to make it stand off the page — the pivot of the image.
• the Shepherd. John's tenth chapter runs under the whole letter: the sheep that hear His voice, the good shepherd who lays down His life, the hand out of which none shall pluck them.
• contentment. Vergnügen — in 1747 still the older sense of sufficiency, having enough, not the modern "amusement".
• ardent love. Brünstig — burning, fervent; an eighteenth-century word that has since narrowed.
• what He has not done. The German exclamation means the opposite of what it says: there is nothing He has not done.
• bloody sweat. Gethsemane, named without being named.
• enclose you in my intercession. Einfassen — to set a stone in its setting; not "include" but "enclose".
• Do not be afraid. Plain, colloquial, and placed after all the argument rather than before it.
• Think nothing evil. The phrase from the great chapter on love, turned around: it is God who must not be thought evil of.
• unto death. The word to Smyrna — "be thou faithful unto death" — laid over a private fright.
• your well-disposed intercessor. The subscription: not director, not teacher; the man who prays for her.