A spurring on to liberality, and to greater earnestness in godliness.

What this letter is. A short, blunt letter of 14 August 1747 to a man in business, telling him to give his money away. The print prints no name — the addressee stands as "N. N." — and the wife greeted at the end is not named either. It is one of the plainest letters in the collection, and Tersteegen apologises for that himself: "I write somewhat short and rough."

The little ship. It opens with an image and a reproach folded together: "I see from your letter, with sorrow and heaviness of heart, that you still let your little ship be tossed to and fro upon the raging sea-waves of worldly business." The diminutive is affectionate — it is a little ship, and the man in it is a brother — but the sentence is still a rebuke, and the thing tossing him is his own trade.

Gather and scatter. Then the demand, in one sentence: "it is no longer for you to gather the goods of this world, but rather to scatter them abroad with both hands." No longer — the man is past the age or the stage for accumulating. The verb for scattering is the one the Psalm uses of the good man who "hath dispersed, he hath given to the poor," and the gesture — both hands — is left exactly as it stands.

Whose shall that be? The question that follows is Christ's, from the parable of the rich man who built bigger barns and died the same night: "Whose shall that be which you have gathered?" It is the only sentence in the letter that uses the familiar singular you, and it does so because it is God speaking, not Tersteegen. The old print sets it in a different type so the reader would see it lift off the page.

The sowing time. The reproach turns immediately into encouragement, and the encouragement is agricultural: "The time for sowing is soon gone; let us not neglect it, for in due season we also shall gather in and reap without ceasing." He gives the reference — Galatians 6 — and the verse he means is the one about not being weary in well doing. Note what has happened to the vocabulary: the gathering that was forbidden two lines earlier is now promised, at harvest, and without end. Nothing is being taken away from the man; the timing is being corrected.

Three articles. The second paragraph answers something the man had evidently written — that he is still willing to take up the cross. Tersteegen is pleased, and then does a characteristic thing: he replaces the creed. "Self-denial is the first article of faith, the noble cross the second, and the following of Jesus Christ the third." It is said lightly and meant entirely.

But not too much. And immediately, the counterweight, which is the sentence a modern reader is likeliest to be surprised by: "let us lay no burdens upon ourselves which are not of God's ordering, and which do but weary the spirit." He has just asked for self-denial and the cross; he now warns against inventing hardships. The distinction is between what God arranges and what we arrange for ourselves, and only the first is worth anything.

His wife. The last paragraph turns to her, and it is the gentlest thing in the letter. She is preoccupied with her own wretchedness; he would like her to be preoccupied with something else. "Let her surrender herself just as she is" — as she is, not as she ought to be first — "and take good heart toward Him who has had so much heart and love for her soul that He shed His blood to redeem it." She died the following month.

A few words and echoes.

• a spurring on. The heading's word keeps a horse in it; "exhortation" would be more decorous and less like him.
• liberality. Open-handed giving — the old English word for it, and the one the epistles use.
• sorrow and heaviness of heart. A pair, not a repetition: grieved regret and a tender melancholy.
• worldly business. Literally the world's dealings; the man is a merchant, and the commercial sense is meant.
• scatter abroad. The Psalm's word for almsgiving, and the opposite of the gathering just refused.
• gather / gathered / gather in. One root, three times in four sentences: what he must stop doing, what the parable asks about, and what God promises at harvest.
• inward calling. Not his trade — the summons underneath it.
• surrender. His standing term for handing oneself over to God; it returns as a verb in the last paragraph, of the wife.
• the poor life of Jesus. Left bare. In a letter about money the poverty is the argument.
• hazard the delicacy of nature. To stake, and risk losing, nature's shrinking from pain.
• article of faith. A creedal term, used to replace a creed.
• short and rough. His own description of the letter, in two plain words.
• take it in the best part. Read it as kindly as it is meant.
• her miseries. Plural and particular; whether bodily or spiritual he does not say.
• just as she is. The whole counsel is in these four words.
• weak fellow-brother. The subscription. "Weak" is how he signs himself throughout this year, and it is not a formula — the next letter says he is ill.