Encouragement to a more cheerful, childlike walk before God.
Addressee, date, and source
The Eighty-Fourth Letter.
Encouragement to a more cheerful, childlike walk before God.
Dearly beloved Sister in Jesus!
It is time that you wrote me a word for once; otherwise I should have wished to remind you of it, as I have had it in mind these several weeks past, but have not been able to. Yes, my dear daughter! do you think that I forget you, and should not ask how it goes with you? The Lord has given our hearts too much fellowship with one another for that — a fellowship of which I believe that He Himself is the ground, and which accordingly will be interrupted by nothing accidental.
But! if I am a dear brother to you, why then are you not also a simple child to me, and write in plain German what it is that ails you again? Or am I always merely to guess at it? Or are you unwilling that I should know your misery? Indeed I believe you would be quite content that I should know it, but you would have the Lord make it known to me. Only, I am no prophet; and it is more profitable for you when you yourself for once say out simply what grieves you, and then forget yourself again, in order to look only upon the sweet Savior.
I am very loath to see you walk sorrowful and oppressed. The Lord has not called you out of the world in order to make you sorrowful and wretched, but in order to make you happy from henceforth in His sweet love and in His beautiful service. The world may live in sorrow, etc. If the flesh has sufferings; if the Savior’s yoke gives nature some pain; if trials and assaults come: should we sorrow over it, and not rather rejoice in the spirit? For these very things can be a proof to us that we are still on the right way. If the Savior will lead us through inward sufferings and strippings, what hinders it? We know indeed that He is unchangeable in His love, and that we too are only to abide unchangeable in love. You know well the rules for fasting, Matthew 6:16 and 17. If it goes somewhat straitly with us inwardly, one must not on that account straightway look sour; but anoint your head and wash your face, that world, nature, and the enemy may not perceive it exactly, but only the Father in heaven. If here or there we have not done rightly, let us make no such great ado over that either! just as if we had to atone for it again by a long disquiet and sorrowing. No! only confess the fault, turn away from it with a quiet displeasure, and then embrace the dearest little child Jesus confidingly, and so forget it all!
You desire admonitions concerning your conduct; I do not know how you mean this. Ah! do but love; then you have rules enough. Let your prayer be loving — that is, in detachment from all created things to embrace God in the ground, and to leave yourself to the God who is inwardly and at all times near you. Do, speak, keep silence, suffer, deny all things only with the simple intention of pleasing God out of love. Then the Lord is content with you, and you can then trust Him that He will Himself accomplish the rest in you. Guard yourself against all straining of the head, especially as the head is heavy at present. Rather say a few words of love to the Lord, and testify to Him that you would gladly suffer for His sake.
— — I do not forget you, dear sister; only be childlike, and pray also for me, who am at present sorely ailing in the head, and daily feverish. My household also send greeting.
Your obliged brother.
Mülheim, the 3rd of February, 1747.
German
Der vierundachtzigste Brief.
Aufmunterung zu einem mehr aufgeheiterten kindlichen Wandel vor GOtt.
In JEsu herzlich geliebte Schwester!
Es ist Zeit, daß du einmal ein Wort an mich schreibest, sonst hätte dich daran erinnern wollen, wie schon etliche Wochen in Gedanken gehabt, habs aber nicht gekonnt.
— 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 letter of 3 February 1747 to a woman he had been writing to for years and calls “my dear daughter.” She had gone quiet; she is unwell; and at some earlier point she had asked him for rules — a plan of conduct to follow. The letter does three things in turn, and does them briskly: it complains that she does not write, it tells her to stop being miserable, and it answers her request for rules in two words.
A few words and echoes.
- cheerful. The heading’s word is literally “brightened, cleared up,” as of weather — and the letter’s whole argument is against a sour face.
- childlike. Never childish. The word runs through the letter — a simple child, the child Jesus, “only be childlike” at the close — and it is the same root as the “childlike walk” of the heading.
- simple. Not slow-witted: singleness, absence of contrivance. The same word returns in “say out simply” and in “the simple intention.”
- in plain German. The German idiom for speaking straight out.
- misery. Spiritual wretchedness, the soul’s poverty, not misfortune.
- I am no prophet. Amos’s disclaimer, and used for the same purpose: I have no special channel, so use ordinary speech.
- oppressed. Pressed hard, hemmed in.
- from henceforth. Happiness beginning now.
- strippings. A technical term of this tradition: God’s withdrawal of felt consolation, the soul laid bare.
- trials and assaults. Provings that put one to the proof, and sudden onsets.
- straitly. Tight, short-rationed — the metaphor of narrow means, apt beside fasting.
- look sour. Luther’s own wording in the fasting passage.
- perceive it exactly. The eighteenth-century just means precisely, not merely.
- nature. Unregenerate human nature, a technical term — and note the enemy is a third party alongside it.
- ado. “Why make ye this ado” — the old English for a great fuss.
- atone. The German says “reconcile,” and the point is that protracted remorse is an attempt at self-atonement.
- quiet displeasure. One act, not a standing mood; and it is set deliberately against the “disquiet” two lines above.
- admonitions concerning your conduct. In this period the word means remonstrances or rules, not memories.
- do but love. Two words in the German, and the answer to her whole request.
- detachment. The old mystical term for release from created things.
- in the ground. The ground of the soul — and the same word he used a page earlier of the fellowship whose ground is God Himself.
- leave yourself to God. The verb of self-abandonment.
- keep silence. One of five bare verbs, and the only one that is not an action.
- the head is heavy. The German has no possessive: it may be hers or a general observation, and his own head is aching four lines later.
- a few words of love. Few, because she is not to strain.
- testify. An act of witness, not merely of reassurance.
- obliged brother. The standard epistolary “beholden” — but the word also means bound and joined, which is what the letter’s opening paragraph said about their fellowship.
- The world may live in sorrow, etc. Almost certainly a hymn stanza she was expected to finish from memory; it has not been identified.
trans. Jarred Fenlason · gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdii-thiii-084 · all rights reservedEnglish translation © Jarred Fenlason · All rights reserved · gerhardtersteegen.com.