Comfort and encouragement to a suffering soul, that in storms, faintness, and misery it may peaceably await the help of the Lord.

What this letter is. On the 13th of June 1748 Tersteegen wrote two letters and folded one inside the other: a letter to an aging Barmen merchant, and this one to the merchant's son — "this present one shall serve as its cover." The son is the young man of the ninety-third letter, the one who asked to be given over unto death; his mother received the ninety-fifth. This letter is the wrapper of the packet, and it turns the accident of postal economy into a small joke of humility: my letter to you is the wrapping paper. What the wrapping paper carries is one of the tenderest short letters of the collection.

The hidden hands. The son needs "support and grace," and the reply gives the two knowledges that frame all consolation here: "I know that you now have need… but I know also that the Lord is near you, and will give you all that is needful, Himself holding you fast with hidden hands." The hands are hidden precisely because they are His own — unfelt, undelegated, and holding fast the very person who cannot feel them. Then the vow, in the words of the apostle and the Revelator together: "We are the Lord's, and would irrevocably remain His, following the Lamb whithersoever He goeth with us" — Tersteegen's one addition to the verse, with us, quietly turning the Lamb's path into the path the two correspondents are actually on, storms included.

Storms serve the foundation. The doctrine of the middle paragraph is given in five words: "all storms and shakings shall serve only to a deeper grounding." The experiences of one's own faintness are not obstacles on the way; borne "with a peaceable awaiting," they are the way — "an actual, or essential, going out of ourselves, that God may become our life and our all."

Do not rearrange the furniture. The practical counsel is the one every director of anxious souls repeats: dryness is no reason to reorganize your devotional life. "Do not lightly, and without necessity, change your exercises of devotion… on account of inward bareness and unfitness. God knows well what is the mind of the Spirit." Even the prayer that feels like nothing is read by the One who reads the Spirit's groaning beneath it. And then the sentence that lifts the whole letter into nobility: "it is a right noble thing to serve even our God, as it were, at one's own charges" — the soldier's phrase inverted; to serve on, unpaid in feeling, is the honest love that seeks "not to content itself, but the Beloved."

The spark and the roll-call. The close turns to the awakened circle in Barmen, whose condition the young man faithfully reports. The blessing asked for them is the letter's most beautiful image: "may the Lord visit them, bless them, and blow upon the little spark in the hearts of them all" — the smoking flax fanned, not quenched — "that at that Day not a single one of them be found missing." The last clause is a muster: at that Day the Shepherd counts, and the prayer is that the count come out full.

A few words and echoes.

• its cover. The outer folded sheet of a letter-packet — the letter itself is the envelope, and says so with a smile.
• with the pen. As against the heart's answering, which keeps no office hours.
• tell you — yea, give you. The letter's modesty in four words: a friend can say; only God can give.
• holding you fast with hidden hands. Thou hast holden me by my right hand — and the hand is hidden because it is God's own.
• We are the Lord's. Whether we live or die — the vow-verse, extended here by "irrevocably."
• whithersoever He goeth with us. The Lamb's path, with the two words that admit the storms into it.
• storms and shakings. His own homely coinage — the tree shaken to root it deeper.
• a deeper grounding. Rooted and grounded; the storm as the gardener's tool.
• going out of ourselves. The old mystics' exit from self-ownership — "actual, or essential": in deed, and then in being.
• all our states. The soul's inward conditions — borne frailly in every one of them, "and all is grace."
• bareness and unfitness. The felt poverty of prayer; no reason to change anything.
• the mind of the Spirit. The letter's one citation, set in its own text: God reads beneath the dryness.
• to content the Beloved. Love's one business, in the century's polite verb — and the Beloved is not oneself.
• at one's own charges. The soldier serves at his lord's cost; the lover of God is nobler, and serves at his own.
• alike near… a like diligence. God's constancy, answered by ours; three "alikes" chime in the German.
• blow upon the little spark. The Seelenfünklein of the old mystics become a Pietist's hearth-image: grace fanned by prayer.
• at that Day. The fixed word for the last muster; the prayer is that none be found missing from it.