To a merchant, who in his old age was yet awakened to give up his worldly business.

What this letter is. This is the letter the ninety-eighth was wrapped around: on the 13th of June 1748 Tersteegen wrote to an aging Barmen merchant — Peter Evertsen, father of the young man of the ninety-third and ninety-eighth letters and of the traveler of the hundredth, husband of the mother of the ninety-fifth — and folded it inside a note to the son. The whole awakened household passes through these pages one member at a time, and this is the father's turn. He is old, established, respected, a presbyter of his congregation; salvation has lately come to his house; and Tersteegen writes to him not as a director to a penitent but as one worn-out man to another, with a merchant's joke on the first line and a summons on the last: it is time to retire from the world and take up the one business that remains.

The debtor's apology. The opening is a small masterpiece of tailored courtesy. To a man of trade Tersteegen apologizes for a late reply in the man's own dialect: I have little in means and many creditors — every unanswered letter a debt, every correspondent a creditor — and "practiced men of trade, such as you are, know well enough from experience that payment cannot proceed so quickly." The self-deprecation carries a quiet compliment: you know how it is when demand outruns capital. Only after the ledger is settled does the letter turn to what has really happened: "salvation has in these several years past come in a special manner to your house" — the word of Zacchaeus's door spoken over a Barmen manufactory.

Emeriti. The letter's center is its one Latin word. "You and I are worn out, my dear friend; with respect to the world we are emeriti" — discharged veterans, soldiers who have served their term. The world's dealings "concern us no more"; its business has no further claim on two old men whom a better world has called. And then the summons, doubled like a psalm: "Come, let us then love him who first loved us! Yea, come, let us now honestly begin" — begin, at seventy — "to live for our God, and dedicate wholly to him the short and feeble remnant of our temporal life." The arithmetic of the remnant is the letter's spine: what is left is short and feeble, and precisely therefore whole — the widow's two mites of time. "Methinks the end of this temporal life must become with us the beginning of an eternal life," and the one-sentence prayer that follows asks Christ himself to work that beginning in both their hearts.

The door that has not opened. The practical matter — almost forgotten, he says, and the forgetting is its own gentle comedy — is an invitation to visit. The answer is a model of discernment under courtesy: every inclination, no present possibility. "If so be the Lord should open a door for a visit abroad" — the apostle's door, which a man may watch for but not force — "for the present time I could not, with peace of mind, get away for a single day." Peace of mind is the test: what cannot be done with it is not yet given to do. What can be done is done instead, and the letter ends doing it: "I cannot forbear to visit your worthy house often in spirit" — the visit already underway in the writing — and the whole household, wife, sons, and servants, is lifted up "this very moment" to the Lord.

A few words and echoes.

• of last month. The letter answers one of the 7th of May — a five-week debt, hence the apology in the mercantile key.
• little in means, and yet many creditors. The pun works in both languages: means as money and as capacity; creditors as claimants and as correspondents.
• salvation has come to your house. This day is salvation come to this house — Zacchaeus's word, the letter's first scripture.
• in a special manner. The Latin adverb of the original — grace particular, not general.
• the gracious direction of God. His word for the leading that arranged an old man's late friendship — nothing in the acquaintance was accident.
• let us then love him who first loved us. The apostle's We love him, because he first loved us, turned from statement into summons.
• the short and feeble remnant. The offering is small and knows it; its wholeness is the point.
• emeriti. The discharged soldiers of the Latin — served out, mustered free; the one word the letter leaves in Latin.
• let the dead bury their dead. The Lord's word to the delaying disciple — the world can administer its own affairs.
• our sweetest Saviour. The superlative is Tersteegen's habitual tenderness, kept as written.
• make us fit for it. The better world must be prepared for; the calling includes the outfitting.
• methinks. The old inward verb for "mich deucht" — conviction arriving as impression, not decree.
• if so be. The old conditional for his "wann anderst" — provided that; the door is the Lord's to open.
• a little letter. His Brieflein — the diminutive of a man who counts writing-time in minutes.
• your household. Wife, sons, and the servants with them — the whole house offered up, none too small to be named in the count.
• and remain, etc. The printer's own abbreviation: the redactor cut the signature and left the bow half-made.