Brotherly sympathy with a soul standing in inward bareness and temptation. Of harmful self-love. Of the days of the spiritual creation. An important call and wish of blessing to some newly awakened ones.

What this letter is. Written in the same week that dysentery was burning through Mülheim, to the younger Evertsen brother in Barmen — the recipient of the ninety-third and ninety-eighth letters — who had fallen into the state the old title calls "inward bareness and temptation": doubting whether the Lord still loved him, and half-doubting whether Tersteegen remembered him at all. The letter answers both doubts in one breath, then rises through a diagnosis of self-love, an allegory of the six days of creation, and a prayer — and closes as a circular letter to the whole awakened household, because the visit that should have carried these greetings in person had just been cancelled.

The doubter reassured. The opening is all tenderness with an edge of humor: he would have written today even had no letter come; he could not forget the brother "even if for a year and a day I heard nothing from you" — and "that you lie near my heart is known to the Knower of hearts." But the deeper doubt gets the proverb: "He who walks in the gloom takes the trees for ghosts." The discouraged soul misreads every shape in the dark — including the shape of God's love. Even the writer's intercession is signed with his own poverty: expect nothing great from my prayer, "as being mine, but everything from the infinite love and mercy of God, who will by no means leave you nor let you go." Then the promise made picture: the three men unharmed in the fiery furnace — "I trust Him for this, that He will preserve you also in the flames of temptations."

The mask of self-love. The middle of the letter does surgery. The brother had written that he is "bound more to himself than to this and that" — and Tersteegen presses further: bound "in a way that you do not yet clearly know. We sit most harmfully imprisoned in ourselves through love of ourselves, through trust in ourselves, through expecting from ourselves." The stroke of genius is the mask: discontent over our badness, faint-heartedness, distrust, weariness of everything — the whole repertoire of religious misery — "we do not think that love of ourselves lurks behind this mask." Even our despair can be self-love in costume, mourning its own disappointed expectations. The absolution follows immediately, in the old print's stressed words: enough that your inner will does not consent; enough that it is "a burden to you and not a delight"; and all this misery has only one office — to sink the soul, "so much the more naked and confiding," in true acknowledgment of its nothingness, into God's bosom. And the astonishing pair of images from the Gospels and the prophets: do not reason over God's leading, "who often makes seeing by mire, and makes clean by ugly soap" — the clay on the blind man's eyes, the fullers' soap of Malachi.

The six days in the soul. The brother had himself remarked something about the creation, and Tersteegen takes the cue into one of his loveliest allegories. Our earth "is, and shows itself to be, waste and void — properly a confused chaos — and with sheer darkness upon the deep." But the life-giving Spirit "takes His six days": He hovers — "as a hen over her eggs" — upon the waters of our miseries, until everything is gradually divided, "and at last a beautiful building comes forth in us, to God's delight and everlasting rest." The soul's chaos is not evidence of God's absence but the very material of His patient creation-week. The paragraph ends on its knees, in the prayer the old print sets in its emphasis type: "Amen! Lord, complete this in us! May our heart and will be truly subject to Thee, as the clay is to its potter! Amen."

The cancelled journey and the circular close. Then the news: the long-planned visit is off. "Divine providence has prevented it" — the epidemic ("the red dysentery continues even yet"), and hands too full to write. The old print's dash here marks where its editor cut a passage; the fuller manuscript copy preserves it: Tersteegen was going from sickbed to sickbed, was "quite run down" himself, and would not abandon the Mülheim circle "at so anxious a time, when every one must daily expect God's visitation" — so the journey to Barmen (the print discreetly says only "thither") had to fall. What follows is the visit he could not pay, made into words: to the household and the "young plants" — the newly awakened — a blessing each by name before God, the charge to hasten while it is day ("for it is soon evening!"), the pearl of great price, the High Priest bearing their names on His heart, and God's own seeking-call after every hiding soul: "Adam! where are you?" The last paragraph turns back to the brother alone — greetings to the aged parents, to brother A., "whom God cares for, and often gives a nudge" — and the blessing that gathers the whole letter: "May the Lord look upon you, and complete it!"

A few words and echoes.

• the Knower of hearts. Acts 15:8 — the God "which knoweth the hearts"; the friendship's witness when letters fail.
• leave you nor let you go. Hebrews 13:5 — "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee" — in Tersteegen's own doubled verbs.
• takes the trees for ghosts. The dark-walking soul misreading shapes; behind it Isaiah 50:10 (walking in darkness, yet trusting) and perhaps the healed blind man's "men as trees, walking" (Mark 8:24).
• the three men in the fiery furnace. Daniel 3 — the edition's own note hears verse 25, the fourth figure in the fire.
• this self under another mask. Larve — the eighteenth century's word for a masquerade mask; self-love attending the soul's mourning in borrowed clothes.
• a burden to you and not a delight. The letter's test of the will — Last against Lust — consent is what damns, not affliction.
• your nothingness… into God's bosom. The Nichts the old print stresses: acknowledged nothingness as the very posture of the fall into God.
• makes seeing by mire… clean by ugly soap. John 9:6 and Malachi 3:2 — God's medicines offend before they heal.
• waste and void… darkness upon the deep. Genesis 1:2 in Luther's words, read as the soul's map.
• as a hen over her eggs. Luther's own homely gloss on the Spirit's "brooding" in Genesis 1:2, here warming the waters of our miseries.
• to God's delight and everlasting rest. The seventh day — creation finished into Sabbath (Genesis 2:2).
• as the clay is to its potter. Jeremiah 18:6; Isaiah 64:8 — the prayer's whole theology in one figure.
• the red dysentery. The rothe Ruhr — the epidemic of autumn 1748; the letter's dash conceals the sickbeds the manuscript copy records.
• the Spirit of grace and of discipline. Zechariah 12:10 crossed with Luther's 2 Timothy 1:7 — the edition's note hears the latter — grace that also trains.
• Adam! where are you? Genesis 3:9 — the first seeking-call, still God's method with every hiding soul. (The King James has "Where art thou?" — this edition's rule gives God's address to a human being the plain you.)
• the precious pearl. Matthew 13:46 — bought at the price of everything.
• for it is soon evening! Luke 24:29 — "abide with us: for it is toward evening."
• your names upon His heart. The high priest's breastplate (Exodus 28:29), carried into Hebrews' great High Priest.
• walk worthy of your high calling. Ephesians 4:1, colored by Philippians 3:14's "high calling."
• men after God's heart. 1 Samuel 13:14; Acts 13:22.
• and complete it! Philippians 1:6 — the letter's last word answers its central prayer: "complete this in us."