Thanksgiving for God's grace over the blessed decease of a dear brother; together with a weighty call to his brothers and sisters.

What this letter is. Johann Gottfried Schmitz — the dying young man to whom the two letters before this one were written — died on the 12th of February 1748, aged about twenty-one. Three days later Tersteegen wrote to the three brothers and sisters he left behind. It is the last letter of an arc that has run through this whole stretch of the collection: the sister's letters about her brother's illness, the two letters to the dying man himself, and now this one to the survivors. The old print hides all the names behind "N. N."; the family's own copy of the letter, which still survives, names the three of them in the greeting.

Neither condolence nor congratulation. The letter opens by refusing the two things such a letter is supposed to do. Condole "after the world's fashion" he cannot, because worldly mourning needs a ground and there is none: the brother is safe. Congratulate he will not either — though "you have cause to rejoice exceedingly, with me and with all the angels," and the sentence that says so carries the whole parable of the lost sheep: sought graciously, found lovingly, carried home swiftly on the Shepherd's shoulders. But the refusal is not coldness, and he concedes the loss in the same breath: they have lost "his bodily companionship," and that loss, "even when borne with resignation, brings suffering." What is left, if one may neither mourn nor celebrate? "This, then, is what I will do: I will sing Job's song of praise before you" — and ask them to sing it after him.

The taking that is keeping. What follows is a meditation sung on one word. The Lord gave this brother; the Lord has taken him — taken him so that no wolf could take him; taken him away Himself, and no stranger; and therefore not taken him from us at all, but taken him into his hand and into safe keeping, "where in his time we shall find it again with unending joy." The old print itself picks out the giving- and taking-words in its emphasis type, so the reader's eye follows the one verb turning over. The dead brother has become a pledge — a thing deposited, not a thing lost — and the letter's audacity is to make even the grief useful: what was lost in his bodily presence "let that too be offered up," so that the mourners' surrender joins the brother himself as an offering.

Three, two, one — and the Fourth. Then Tersteegen turns to the survivors with the sentence that gives the letter its edge, and the print sets its numbers in the emphasis type: "you three will soon be two, and then one only will remain." It is not a threat; it is arithmetic, spoken by a man who had buried most of the people he loved. The counsel that follows is correspondingly tender: love one another heartily for the short time; bow, nestle close, venture yourselves at it. And then the astonishing offer: "would you rather be four again than three? — then take Jesus for the Fourth; receive Him and take Him in." And if the fourth must be visible: "then reckon me among that number." The letter ends by giving them back, in himself, a brother of flesh — and signs itself accordingly.

The cry. Through the middle of the letter runs a triple cry the print sets like a bell tolling: "To eternity! to eternity! to eternity! — so do all such voices cry to us." Every death in the circle was such a voice, and this letter is his transcription of what it says.

A few words and echoes.

• the blessed decease. The heading's paradox, and the letter's whole argument in two words.
• passage … going hence. Two words for the one death: the crossing as he made it, and the leaving as they felt it.
• released out of mortality. Death as redemption from a condition, not the end of a life.
• after the world's fashion. Said twice, of condoling and of mourning — the refusal is of the mode, not of the grief.
• a little sheep. The diminutive of the parable and of tenderness; sought, found, carried — the three verbs of Luke 15.
• Job's song of praise. The doxology sung, not quoted — with the reminder that the bereaved are to sing the response.
• pledge. A deposit in trust; the word on which the taking turns into keeping.
• into safe keeping. "He is able to keep that which I have committed unto him."
• more than ten, yea, ten thousand brothers. Elkanah's question to Hannah, multiplied a thousandfold.
• spurring-on … separation. The decease (Abscheiden) becomes detachment (Abscheidung) — in German the same word heard twice.
• children of eternity. His signature phrase, coined against the children of this world.
• seducing wares. The world as a peddler at the door; the wares are what she shows, not what she has.
• nestle yourselves close. The tender middle imperative — pliancy toward one another, now that time is known to be short.
• take Jesus for the Fourth. The form of the fourth in the furnace; a household of three completed from above.
• obliged, yet also weak brother. The subscription enacts the letter's last offer: he signs on as the visible fourth.