Encouragement not to come down from the cross; in suffering one learns to suffer, and that the smelter is our friend. Rule of conduct in temptation against the brother-love.

The Hundred-and-twenty-seventh Letter.

Encouragement not to come down from the cross; in suffering one learns to suffer, and that the smelter is our friend. Rule of conduct in temptation against the brother-love.

N. N.

It is true that I, on the one side with brotherly compassion, on the other side however also with still worship of the wise and wholesome ways of God, look upon your state and body's-weakness. What shall I say? I simply cannot say to you: Come down from the cross! By no means! but hold out with the utmost possible rest and trust! This is the way; the Lord's hand is in all that, and supports in the hidden. Yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry.

Our sketch, which we make ourselves at the beginning of the Christian-stand, is fairly defective; we forget often the cross-strokes. We will suffer, O yea! but as heroes. It shall be no contemptible suffering; it shall be no so unjust strange suffering; it shall be no so very painful or dark suffering; it shall not come from that side. We will suffer, but not that which we suffer: All other suffering comes welcome to us, excepted the suffering which we have. In short! we will not suffer at all, and also not suffer that with patience, that we find ourselves so impatient.

Courage! my brother! in suffering one learns to suffer; and when the resistance has worked itself to death, then the spirit tastes the sweet fruit that grows forth out of the bitter root. O! tender, pure, and most inwardly quiet taste of the spirit, so born out of cross and suffering, and not so easily, as other sweet communications, corrupted by self-love! It becomes indeed, when it comes to it, all dark to a man, so that one has not the preciousness of the sufferings and the fruit of the same so before oneself; yet the Lord strengthens and quiets through intervening glances, as there is need, yea lifts well even above the insights and sensibilities of nature.

I pray you, let yet the wise and most gracious God do with you! Reason not over His way, nor over the suffering; accommodate yourself to Him, and serve Him after His manner, and just in that wherein you are, so will even the present become your highest furtherance and your peace! No! dear brother! your trust as well as other insights of God's ways have been no imaginations: It must however all be proved through the cross and become ripe, and under it, things assuredly never agree with the conception we had otherwise formed; the thing itself however comes without fail, and indeed unbelievably-nobler than it was promised. The glorious land Canaan is promised, and in the hope we leave Egypt; meanwhile much must die in the wilderness, and this hope be shaken in many trials, also live through many an evening and morning. God holds His word nevertheless, and the children that are born in the wilderness inherit the land that flows with milk and honey. Psalm 69:36. and 37. Messiah and His kingdom was long promised, expected and most majestically prefigured: It came yet at last, but as a poor little child. The disciples themselves still had much of His kingdom in their heads; at one moment it seemed all over; at the next they thought: Now it will yet still come: It came also; but it accorded not with their coarse conception: His kingdom was not of this world, but it came inwardly in them through the blessed experience of the lordship of Jesus in their hearts, and of His peace and divine glory, against which all kingdoms of this world are worthless phantasies.

Once more; be of good courage! my brother! yield not; give yourself to the Lord wholly, without wanting to have your nature and selfhood spared. He knows best when, how and where to lay hold of one's own life. You suffer not alone. I greet you quite heartily.

P. S. I was just about to seal this letter, as I receive your pleasant one of the day-before-yesterday, whereupon then yet this I briefly add.

Write without reasoning and scrupling, so often as you find inclination thereto; it will be right dear to me at all times, although I cannot always answer with the pen: One yet grasps one another through God's grace, even had it otherwise no use.

Become not discouraged; or bear yet the discouragement with so much contentment as is possible, for I can say with truth: I see no danger in your way. You see not the hand that leads you and supports. The gold shall be purified; there the fire causes suffering and distress; one sees gold no more, but only impurity: The Surface, or the upper part, is quite covered therewith. Such men are we. It must come forth; we must see it yea feel it: that is to self-love a bitter draught. One has wanted to make oneself clean, and now first becomes right unclean. Had one not received the inextinguishable hunger after God and His life, then were it still more bearable: Yet the smelter is and remains our friend. He watches over it, how long it shall last and how far it shall come. So one learns to sink oneself into the pure grace, and to recognise the necessity of a wholly new ground-life out of Jesus. So one learns to bow and bend oneself. Here must reason at last give it up, and only blindly confess guilt before God and men, even where one just cannot see guilt.

You ask: whether it were not better to explain yourself toward those who (as you think) cause you suffering? Answer, yea! that is better in the case when one and the same reproach makes you vexation some time, or days one after another, and it will fall too heavy upon you. And also then; when you have cause to think that another (as e.g. brother N.) marks your dissatisfaction, and would also gladly change it, if he only knew. In such cases I say it is best that you speak of it as modestly as you can; not indeed chiefly and only, that you may get relief, but to forestall a greater evil of suspicion and of the bitter root; and, that another may not also come into distress, who sees us suffer, and knows not wherewith he shall help, because we are shut.

But to say all and every thing that torments one, and whatever merely vexatious thing of others is brought or presented to one in thoughts; or, where another, after our judgment, or also in the truth, does not make it right, there would be no end, and often the explaining of a pure nothing would make a real suffering; for the harsh forces sit in us; when now these drive about the suffering mind, there everything comes vexatious to one; and where one is out of the way, there is already again something else there.

On the whole it is thus in the most and in the small trials better, you only bear yourself a little; so vanishes much, without speaking of it, and afterwards we see it in another light. It is certain that others (in specie brother N.) will not make you to suffer of set purpose, although it can so appear. Meanwhile, when God will exercise us and make suffering, then must often another, against his intention, so do or so speak, that it just hurts us. Sometimes however it is also in our dark imagination so painted and magnified by the tempter, that well little or nothing is in it. For the rest I pray you, seek not to help yourself much, when the affections are stirred up; you will become once again so vexed thereby. Consent into your nothingness and powerlessness; sink yourself into the pure grace, and longsufferingly await the help of the Lord, is more than enough. When the Lord's little hour is there, the deliverance comes. Jesus with you my brother!

Mülheim, the 18th of December, 1749.

German

Der hundertundsiebenundzwanzigste Brief.

Aufmunterung nicht vom Kreuz herab zu steigen; im Leiden lernt man leiden, und daß der Schmelzer unser Freund sey. Verhaltungs-Regel in Versuchung wider die Bruder-Liebe.

N. N. Es ist wahr, daß ich einer Seits mit brüderlichem Mitleiden, anderer Seits aber auch mit stiller Anbetung der weisen und heilsamen Wege GOttes deinen Zustand und Leibes-Schwächlichkeit ansehe.

— Opening lines of the original German. The complete transcription of all 605 letters appears in the forthcoming Encounter Press critical edition; Brief 1 is shown in full as a sample.

German text: public domain (1773–75 first edition / 1845 Gesammelte Schriften).