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.

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.

Holding presses; letting go refreshes. The prosperity gets four words. Halten drückt; Loslassen erquickt — a rhymed jingle, and the whole of his economic teaching. Money is not the danger; grip is. The blessing stays a blessing only through what he calls detachment, and turns into a curse "for themselves" — not for anyone else — in the people who hold it fast.

Give a Mary lodging. Then the seasonal application, and it is startlingly concrete: he had been going round the well-off households of Mülheim in the days before Christmas saying, give a Mary lodging gladly, and a Joseph, and you have taken Jesus in with them. It is the inn at Bethlehem turned into a piece of local charity-canvassing. And then, in one clause, the thing that makes it more than sentiment: "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." Naked, hungry, cold — Matthew 25's list — attached to the infant of the Nativity.

An old book in a foreign language. The Cyprian follows, and it is long: two passages from a third-century tract on almsgiving, which Tersteegen has evidently been reading in Latin and is translating as he goes. Then the apology, which is the most human sentence in the letter: "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 to me, I thought it would not displease you either." Because it tasted to me. He had got carried away and knew it.

The three crowns. The second Cyprian passage builds to a scene of judgement in which the Lord musters His people and pays out — the heavenly for the earthly, the eternal for the temporal — and the payment is crowned three times over: the crown of peace, won without persecution; the white crown for works; the purple-red crown, paid double, for sufferings. That triple is the passage's spine, and it did not go unnoticed: the printers of the second edition, fifty years later, picked out all three phrases in heavy type, and no earlier reader had.

Deed-Christians. He steps out of the quotation with a judgement that is his own and is carefully balanced: "The first Christians were deed-Christians, and none the less gave all honour to the blood of Christ." He wants both halves. The word he coins — That-Christen — is a single compound in German, and the point of it is that deeds and blood are not rivals.

The fire at Amsterdam. Then, abruptly, a piece of news: a storm; and in Holland, a bad fire at a baker's, two houses burnt out — and in the middle of it a chamber where a godly person lodged, untouched, with everything in it, "except one looking-glass, which cracked as they were about to carry it out." He does not explain the mirror. It is left standing there, the one thing the deliverance did not extend to, and the exception is what makes the story worth telling.

Simply to the physician. With that he turns to what the letter is really for. His correspondent has said he cannot make out his own inward state. The answer refuses the premise: you do not need to. "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." Then the prescription, and it is deliberately unimpressive: "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 distraction." And the diagnosis of what the man has been doing instead: "Turning things over about ourselves makes us only more wretched and more gloomy."

Why the mysteries have gone flat. The last long paragraph answers the actual complaint, and it does not tell him to try harder. It offers two reasons. The first is his own fault, granted in a half-line. The second is not a fault at all: "sometimes God's good hand is in it too" — because we linger over the picture of a mystery and play with it, and so the child takes the picture away in order to give Himself instead. Then the argument's proof, and it is the boldest thing in the letter: Mary carried the child under her heart and saw nothing of Him, and had no distinct notion of the mystery either. She adored; she loved; she gave herself up. Whatever a lively feeling of Christmas is, she did not have it, and she had Him.

A poor shepherd-boy. In between stands the letter's one cry — "O Jesus! how can it be? A God! a child!" — and then, immediately, the self-portrait: "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." He puts himself among the shepherds, not among the wise men, and he goes without seeing.

A few words and echoes.

• open-handedness. The heading's word is the ordinary one for charitable giving; "liberality" has drifted and "almsgiving" is narrower than he means.
• your welcome letter. Literally "your agreeable" — the standing 18th-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 presses; letting go refreshes. Rhymed and metrical in the German, and printed in heavy type as 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.
• for that a childlike faith is required. The German construction throws "for that" to the front, and so does the English.
• 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 judgement.
• 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 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, so the English keeps it indefinite.
• 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.
• distraction. In its old sense: being pulled apart, not being entertained.
• the pure mind. Unmixed, unalloyed — his term for what is left when self-will is out of it.
• self-will. Ownness, being one's own; his standing opposite to God.
• go hungry. The same verb as "hunger after them" above, and it is a prescription, not a misfortune.
• side with. To hold with a party; the German idiom is the same and the sentence turns on it four times.
• 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, meaning is unknown; left as it stands.
• 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, kept because the sentence needs the heart.
• 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.