A consoling instruction to a sick brother: that Jesus is his salvation and eternal life.

What this letter is. A letter of 16 November 1747 to a young man dying of a long illness. He was about twenty; he had lost his mother at six and his father at fourteen; he died the following year. On the same day Tersteegen wrote to the young man's sister about him — that letter stands immediately before this one — and the two were printed together. The letter does not ask for recovery and does not pretend the illness will pass. It argues that the thing being taken away is not the thing worth having.

Not the illness but the grip. The first paragraph turns the sickness into a rescue, and does it with a startling image: God "drew you to Himself with power from plunging down; but because He drew and took hold strongly, the mortal body is to feel the suffering a little while." The pain is not the accident of the rescue; it is the grip. And the sentence does not stop at the body: it runs on past death, so that the same body which now feels the grip will one day thank the one who took hold.

The verse the whole letter turns on. In the middle of the first paragraph he writes: "Jesus is the true God, and eternal life." That is not his phrase. It is the last sentence of the first letter of John, chapter five — and once you hear it there, the rest of the paragraph is a set of variations on it: this is the Jesus; this same Jesus. He never says he is quoting. But the surviving manuscript of this letter, in his own hand, has those words underlined; and so it does the phrase "the Jesus" a few lines later. He knew exactly what he was leaning on.

What is worth more than life. Against this "life of light and love" he sets "this life, and everything that goes by the name of delight and life" — and calls it "nothing but distress and death." In the manuscript the last three words come the other way round, and in German they rhyme. The rhyme is gone in English; the judgement is not.

Ah and Oh. Then the letter turns from doctrine to what the sick man is actually feeling, and treats his groans as evidence: "Do you not mark it — how many an Ah and Oh he awakens in your inward part?" The wordless sounds of a sickroom are not read as symptoms of weakness but as something being done in him, and by someone. Everything that follows is the argument that these sounds are a call and can be answered.

For nothing. The word he uses of the forgiveness — umsonst — has slid in modern German toward "in vain," and it does not mean that here. It means free of charge, at no cost, gratis: the sins are blotted out for nothing, the way water is given without money in Isaiah. It is the letter's one flatly doctrinal moment and he spends only a clause on it.

Just as you are. The close is a piece of practical instruction, given twice over so that it cannot be mistaken for a feeling: nestle and sink yourself into this lap of love — "just as you are"; "do it the whole day long." Not a resolution but a posture, resumed as often as it is lost. And then the shepherd: He seeks you all day, you seek Him all day; lie right on Him and in Him, until He picks you up. The verbs of the parable are all there, and the sheep is not asked to walk home.

What the print does not tell you. The printed letter addresses "brother N." and is signed by nobody. The manuscript is addressed to Godfried Schmitz at Solingen, salutes him by name, and is signed Gerh. Tersteegen, at Mülheim on the Ruhr. The editor of 1775 removed the name at both ends — as he does throughout this collection — and one small thing besides: where Tersteegen wrote that "the dear children of God here greet you," the print has only "the dear children."

A few words and echoes.

• a consoling instruction. The heading's own pair: it is meant to comfort and to teach, and it does the second in order to do the first.
• for one thing. He is dividing his own response in two, and the second half arrives four lines later — grief for the body, gladness for the soul.
• with fellow-feeling. Suffering-with, literally; the ordinary German word for pity still had the compound visible in it.
• Friend of man. A title, not a description — the epistle to Titus calls God's appearing his love of man, and the German keeps it as one word.
• plunging down. Not falling: a headlong plunge, and the rescue is a grab.
• took hold. The hand closing is why it hurts.
• life of misery and shadow. Two words in the German, joined; the shadow is the old one of the psalms, and the misery is his own.
• cease outright. The concessive is grudging on purpose: even supposing it stops.
• contenting. Not "pleasing" — a life that satisfies, that leaves nothing wanting.
• goes by the name of. He will not concede the word life to it.
• distress and death. Rhymed in the German, and reversed from what he first wrote.
• made you one who seeks. The seeking is not his own doing either — that is the whole point of the clause.
• inward part. The ground where God alone works; a place, not a mood.
• inclining. A leaning of the will, not a decision.
• call of love. One word in German, and the manuscript spells it with the same doubled letter as the verb calls at the close.
• without hesitating. Without stopping to consider whether he qualifies.
• adore. Standing without an object, as in the German.
• For nothing. Free of charge — not "in vain."
• bosom. Lap, breast, womb: the word will not be pinned to one of them, and he uses it twice.
• nestle and sink. Both verbs kept; the first is what a child does, the second what a weight does.
• just as you are. Unconditional, and placed where a condition would be expected.
• shoulders. The shepherd's, in the parable; the sheep does not walk.
• sheepfold. The old word, with the fold of John 10 behind it.
• Faithful is He that calls you. Word for word from the end of First Thessalonians, and the last thing he says before signing off.
• well-disposed intercessor. The subscription; in the manuscript the older form of the word, more like fore-prayer.