An encouragement to open-handedness, out of Cyprian. An instance of God’s wonderful care over His own. On praying rightly, and on the mystery of the childhood of Jesus.
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The Ninetieth Letter.
An encouragement to open-handedness, out of Cyprian. An instance of God’s wonderful care over His own. On praying rightly, and on the mystery of the childhood of Jesus.
In our sweet Savior, dearly beloved brother!
Your welcome letter of the 16th of this month I duly received on the 22nd. — —
Where I can otherwise be of service, only say so, in brotherly freedom. I hope there is nothing I hold so dear that I would not give it from the heart to a brother; were it otherwise with me, then it would not be right. Holding oppresses; letting go refreshes.
That the Lord blesses your handiwork — for that let Him be thanked! Through detachment it remains a blessing, where otherwise, sad to say, people by holding fast turn the blessing into a curse for themselves. So you do well to let it flow out freely. “Let us do good while we have time,” where Paul in Galatians 6 has in view precisely the works of love and mercy. The days before the feast I said to some well-off people: give a Mary lodging gladly, and a Joseph, and you have taken Jesus in with them. Cast about at home, whether you have not something in the house with which the poor, naked, chilled, hungry child Jesus can be covered and refreshed at this season. To see Jesus in the needy — for that a childlike faith is required. It comes to me just now what the holy martyr Cyprian says very stirringly in one place on this matter:
“Make,” says he to the parents, “the immortal God the guardian of your children: their inheritance is in safety when you give it to God to keep. That is to have made right provision for one’s dear pledges” (he means the children) “against the time to come,” etc. And in another place he says:
“My dearest brethren, you who have a hearty fear of God, and who — now that you have despised the world and trodden it under foot — stand raised up in mind toward what is above and divine: let us with full faith, with devout heart, and with unbroken occupation in what is good, show the Lord our diligence in His service! Let us give Christ earthly clothing, we who are to receive a heavenly adornment of clothing! Let us reach Him the food and drink of this life, we who are to come with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to the heavenly marriage-feast! Let us sow much, that we may not reap little! — — What a glory it will be, my dearest brethren, for those who have wrought good! what a great and highest joy! when the Lord shall begin to muster His people, and shall deal out to our faithfulness and good deeds the honors He has promised, and shall give for what is earthly the heavenly, for what is temporal the eternal, for what is small something great; when He shall begin to offer us up to the Father, to whom He has restored us by His sanctifying; when He shall bestow on us the eternity and immortality for which He has made us ready again by the quickening of His blood! — — This blessed activity in what is good, my dear brethren, is an excellent and a divine thing; — — a thing that stands in the power of the one who does it; a great thing and an easy one, by which a man attains the crown of peace even without the danger of persecution. — — We who have now begun to be greater than this time and world, let us not hold up our course through any desire of this time and world. And if either the day of our dissolution or the day of persecution shall find us girded, quick, and running in the contest of this work, then the Lord will in no point fail to repay our faithful service. To those who overcome in peace He will give the white crown for their works; and to those who conquer in persecution He will repay the purple-red crown double, for their sufferings.” Amen!
I do not know, dear brother, how I come to write you so much out of a foreign language and an old book. I meant only to bring in a little saying; but because it tasted good to me, I thought it would not displease you either to hear a stirring word from one of the first Christian teachers and martyrs of Jesus Christ — one who at the beginning of his conversion gave up his goods, and in the year 258 gave his head and his blood, to Christ. The first Christians were deed-Christians, and none the less gave all honor to the blood of Christ. Let us hunger after them!
The storm-wind has been violent here too, and has done much damage to houses and trees; and so throughout the whole of H., from where I am written to, among other things, that some days before, in that place — namely in A. — there had also been a hard fire, at a baker’s, by which two houses were laid in ashes. At that baker’s a godly soul had lodged in a chamber, and that chamber, with everything belonging to this person, was preserved; except one looking-glass, which cracked as they were about to carry it out. — —
That you do not rightly understand yourself in respect of the state of your mind, I well believe; go for that very reason, along with me, simply to the physician — He understands it. We understand at least this much, that we are sick. Ah, praying, praying — that is our universal medicine, and that without art and without rule; only as we are able. The most broken-down prayer is better than the best diversion. Turning things over about ourselves makes us only more wretched and more gloomy. Through prayer we draw near to God and are held up. But in order to be able to pray well, the pure mind must honestly come out of the false life of nature and selfhood, and go hungry. Whoever would hold with nature cannot pray. Whoever holds with God prays; and whoever prays holds with God, and God with him; and there the childlike faith conquers at last. But you know it well enough.
The mysteries of the birth and childhood of Jesus (you say) do not make so much impression on your mind as they otherwise do at this season of the year. Perhaps we are ourselves partly at fault in that? For all that, Jesus is just as much to be adored and loved, and His mysteries, from the manger onward, are a deep abyss which the angels have longed to look into. O Jesus! how can it be? A God! a child! to seek me out in my misery, to give Himself to me, and to make one out of God and man. Selah! Between me, poor shepherd-boy, and the stable at Bethlehem there often rises a mist, so that I see nothing of Bethlehem; still I will go there. That Sun will drive away all our mist and gloom soon enough. And sometimes God’s good hand is in it too, because we sometimes stay too long at the sensible and pictorial part of the mysteries, and as it were play with it; whereupon the child Jesus may well take His image away from us, in order to give Himself to us instead — just as the holy mother Mary carried the child Jesus near enough, under her heart, before the birth, and yet saw nothing of Him, and had no distinct notion of the mystery either: she adored; she loved; she gave herself up to it. So let us do the same! The sensible devotions often seem to be more than they are; the intelligible ones, that is, the merely spiritual devotions, have on the contrary more substance in them than they seem to have. Whoever wants nothing but God has nothing anywhere to fear.
Now I must break off. I greet you once more heartily, my dear brother! Remember me too, as I desire to do the like. — — Greet friend W. also from me, when you have occasion: may Jesus Himself visit, bless and embrace his immortal soul with eternal grace, Amen! Greet the other acquaintance thereabouts as well.
Your bound and feeble brother.
Mülheim, the 24th of December, 1747.
German
Der neunzigste Brief.
Anmuthigung zur Mildthätigkeit aus Cypriano. Ein Exempel der wunderbaren Vorsorge GOttes über die Seinen. Vom recht Beten und vom Geheimniß der Kindheit JEsu.
In unserm süßen Heilande herzlich geliebter Bruder!
Dein Angenehmes vom 16ten dieses habe den 22ten richtig erhalten. — — Wo ich sonst mit dienen kan, das melde nur in brüderlicher Freiheit.
— 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. Christmas Eve, 1747. A letter answering one that arrived two days earlier, written to a man who works with his hands and who has told Tersteegen two things: that his trade is going well, and that the Christmas mysteries are not moving him this year the way they usually do. The letter answers both — the first in three lines, the second at length — and in between it does something Tersteegen almost never does: it quotes a Church Father at length, and then apologises for it.
A few words and echoes.
- open-handedness. The heading’s word is the ordinary one for charitable giving.
- your welcome letter. Literally “your agreeable” — the standing eighteenth-century formula for a letter received, and he leaves the noun out.
- in brotherly freedom. Ask without ceremony; the word is his technical one for freedom from constraint.
- Holding oppresses; letting go refreshes. Rhymed and metrical in the German, a maxim.
- handiwork. Work of the hands; the man makes his living by them.
- detachment. Standing loose to a thing while still holding it — the central term of his whole practical teaching.
- sad to say. Not “unfortunately”: a note of grief, not of regret.
- while we have time. Galatians 6:10, quoted as a saying, with the reference added after it.
- give a Mary lodging. Take in as a guest — the verb behind the German noun for an inn.
- chilled. Cold right through; a nursery word for a child left out in the weather.
- pledges. Cyprian’s word for children — things given in trust and redeemable; the German keeps it.
- against the time to come. Provision made for a future, and in the quotation’s logic that future is the judgment.
- etc. The print’s own mark that the quotation runs on beyond what he copied out.
- unbroken occupation in what is good. Steady employment at it, not enthusiasm for it.
- diligence in His service. One compound in German: eagerness-to-serve.
- the contest of this work. An athletic contest, as in Paul’s foot-race; “struggle” would make it grim.
- the white crown … the purple-red crown. Cyprian’s pair: the martyr’s crown is the red one, and it is paid twice over.
- because it tasted good to me. Not “because I liked it”: the verb is the one for food, and it is why the letter got long.
- deed-Christians. His own coinage, one word.
- hunger after them. Not imitate — hunger; the verb returns two paragraphs later, of prayer.
- a godly soul. The German gives this person a neuter noun and no name.
- looking-glass. The period word, and the object is the point of the story.
- the physician. Christ, unnamed; the definite article does the work.
- universal medicine. The apothecary’s term for a remedy good against everything.
- without art and without rule. Without technique and without a method — aimed squarely at the devotional manuals.
- the most broken-down prayer. Feeble, decrepit, falling apart; and it still wins.
- diversion. The old rival of prayer: dissipating oneself outward among things, instead of collecting oneself before God.
- the pure mind. Unmixed, unalloyed — his term for what is left when selfhood is out of it.
- selfhood. Ownness, being one’s own — everything the creature holds as its own; his standing opposite to God.
- go hungry. The same verb as “hunger after them” above, and it is a prescription, not a misfortune.
- hold with. To hold with a party; the sentence turns on it four times — and it answers the letter’s opening maxim: the holding that oppresses is holding to things, the holding that saves is holding with God.
- make so much impression. The correspondent’s own words, quoted back in the parenthesis.
- just as much to be adored and loved. The critical edition glosses the small word here as “equally” — the mysteries have not changed value because the feeling has gone.
- deep abyss. Depth without a floor; and the angels are still looking in.
- Selah. The psalms’ word, of unknown meaning.
- shepherd-boy. Not shepherd: he is the youngest and least of them.
- That Sun. The sun of righteousness; the demonstrative points away from the mist.
- the sensible and pictorial part. What can be felt and what can be imagined — the two things his correspondent is missing and does not need.
- take His image away. The picture, not the presence, and the removal is a gift.
- under her heart. The German idiom for a child in the womb.
- no distinct notion. Not “no idea”: notion in the older sense, a clear concept.
- intelligible … merely spiritual. Grasped by the understanding rather than by the senses; “merely” is his, and it is not dismissive.
- bound and feeble brother. The subscription: bound to you, and weak — and he had been ill for years.
trans. Jarred Fenlason · gerhardtersteegen.com/letters/bdii-thiii-090 · all rights reservedEnglish translation © Jarred Fenlason · All rights reserved · gerhardtersteegen.com.