How needful is perseverance in the practice of prayer and of inward-turning, especially also in times of inner stripping, drought and darkness.

The Hundred-and-thirty-sixth Letter.

How needful is perseverance in the practice of prayer and of inward-turning, especially also in times of inner stripping, drought and darkness.

In the grace of Jesus, highly-valued dear brother!

Although we correspond little in writing, yet I can in simplicity say before God that I love you, and find myself united with you in the spirit, and also that your last letter of the 17th of January was pleasant to me. I notice indeed that you make too fair an idea of me; only that is love's way, and I wish to turn it to use. Your soul's constitution, of which you brotherly open to me one thing and another, I have sought and will seek to present to the Lord in my prayer, according to the grace I myself expect from Him.

That perseverance in the practice of prayer and inward-turning is of such weight, can, next to experience, the tempter's cunning and endeavour alone sufficiently teach us — to lure us off from it and to make us slothful therein: He knows that by this blessed practice alone his dark kingdom in the soul is necessarily destroyed, through the unperceived influence of the light, the love and the life of Jesus; and that all flowers and fruits of the fairest graces and virtues soon wither of themselves, when he can but break them off from this their root. Jesus alone is Mediator and canal, whereby the divine life and powers must again be infused into our humanity, gone out of kind and dead to the good: Through the practice of heart-prayer (as that in which faith, love, hope, etc. concentrate themselves) we become and remain united with Him and rooted in Him; since hunger, love-desire and inward affections are as it were our roots, whereby we unperceived receive sap and strength out of Jesus, although one cannot always so clearly see and feel how it comes to pass; and whether it comes to pass? O let us pray, and apply ourselves to the heart's inward-turning! The frailest prayer is more wholesome than the best distraction. Much apparent good the enemy lets us do; yea he even drives us to it, only that we should omit the prayer.

I am through the dear brother's writing only confirmed in what my own experience, and the experience with others, has in many ways taught me; namely how the tempter especially takes heed of the time of stripping, drought and darkness, to bring the soul off from the unmoved practice of prayer, and therewith from her strength. Yet these are just the times when we could be prepared to the greatest progress and going-out from ourselves, if we only knew how to hold out with the Lord, and to yield ourselves to Him. I will say: That, when we could not go forward in the otherwise accustomed way with the prayer-practice, we then also should not with stiff self-will and straining hold fast what the Lord is pleased to take from us, but should yield, quietly consent to our nakedness and poverty, offer up our taste, light and pleasure to His pleasure and good-pleasure, and let this His good-pleasure be our prayer and our meat: See, then should we in time experience the gain of such a letting-go, stripping and as it were losing, and be made capable of a deeper, or better said a purer inward-turning, manner of prayer, and union with God; which is just God's intention.

But this is our misery and our weakness, that we are so thoroughly penetrated with self-love, and seek ourselves, even while we think we are seeking God: If we then find nothing for ourselves, no light, taste, or otherwise anything pleasant, we imagine we cannot find God, grow weary and disheartened, and even seek food for this self in other things, when it is no longer so granted us in God and in the good. Ah my God! how utterly unseemly is this mind in a heart that has dedicated itself to thy pure service and to thy love! Destroy this ground of self-love, that in thy service we may seek not ourselves but truly thee, not our pleasure but thy pleasure, for thou art our end, and in thee, not in us, is all our blessedness. Amen!

Before the day of Pentecost was come, the dear disciples could not long hold out in the stillness without the bodily visible presence of Jesus. I go a fishing, said Peter; the time hung heavy on them in the solitude: So it goes with us too; one goes out fishing in a book, with a man, etc. and it is grace, when in such a night one can catch nothing anywhere, and the Saviour still meets one, and, as with the dear disciples, shows the fruitlessness of all one's own seeking. With fear, with shame, with deep acknowledgment of the divine longsuffering and goodness I remember what my own experience in this point has well taught me; namely that the neglect of the prayer-practice is so weighty, and that in the time of inner darkness and drought one can so easily fall into this temptation. One does not notice the damage so soon; by degrees one comes further, and at times so far off the track that one has scarcely courage ever to come right again. A soul without prayer-practice is as a single little sheep without a shepherd. The tempter knows this; he makes use of the dark and bare states of mind, that he may remove the soul from her shepherd; there he cunningly spreads his net, brings the mind into doubt and confusion, sets this or that apparent thing before it, drives it to all manner of change, it should try it once with this practice, in this and that state, at this and that place, among an apparent company or sect; whereby in these and former times so many upright souls have been deceived in a dark night; for our warning, that in the dark and the dry we must not readily undertake some change, but remain where we are.

Let us only in Jesus' name take courage again and again, begin again there where we left off, and carry ourselves precisely again as we did before the departure! The wonderful goodness of our God makes use of all things, even of our faults and sins, for our good: (His wisdom be worshipped!) afterwards we must also turn the same to use as best we can, and lay up from it a good store of thorough self-contempt; though we are by no means to varnish our evil therewith, but with all diligence to avoid it. Rom. 6:12. Our nothingness, known in the light, works humility, but a humility upon which we at times become a little proud; but our nothingness, known through experience, leaves self-love no lurking-place; one must stand bare and confess one's shame. Many men talk of denying their own righteousness who have as yet little or no righteousness: But in true-minded souls this poison creeps in first, that one unperceived sets one's righteousness and one's trust in one's faithfulness, in one's denials, in one's virtues and graces, in one's prayer-practices, and not so barely in God alone; and there can then afterwards the dear Saviour open our eyes with our own filth, of which however His wonder-hand alone has the honour, and we the shame. The experience of our weaknesses, miseries and of our general nothingness must not make us faint-hearted, but give occasion to empty ourselves of ourselves, to leave ourselves, to turn so much the more nakedly, and therefore also so much the more essentially, into God, that He may fill us with Himself, and become in us all that we ourselves have not or cannot perform. And thither will God have us, that no flesh should glory before His face, but Jehovah alone be our righteousness, and our boast. See, dear brother! so would the nakedness, emptying and letting-go, whereunto the experience of our miseries gives us occasion, make us capable afterwards of the noblest manner of prayer and union with God. Praised be the wonderful and endless loving-kindness of our God in Christ Jesus!

Because I am always hindered in writing, and through visits and business always led off onto something else, my writing may well seem to you somewhat disordered and unclear. I have only wished to show my simple love and the union with what the anointing itself teaches you. Let us, dear brother, go on, going to school with this only infallible Master of the truth, and become ever more right little heart-children! O yes, it is truth, what the anointing teaches us; and there is no other truth than this. I greet and kiss you in the spirit of love. Remember me before God, when it is given you; I desire through God to do the like.

Greet for my sake heartily the dear members in N. I often send them an inward wish of blessing: Jesus warm and quicken their and our hearts with His sweet love! Amen! I am and remain weakly, so that I am in little condition to write: This weakness too bids me break off. Through grace I remain

Your Mülheim, faithfully obliged weak the 12th of March, 1750. fellow-brother.

German

Der hundertsechsunddreißigste Brief.

Wie nöthig die Beharrlichkeit in der Übung des Gebets und der Einkehr, sonderlich auch in Zeiten der inneren Entblößung, Dürre und Dunkelheit seye.

In der Gnade JEsu werthgeschätzter lieber Bruder!

Ob wir gleich schriftlich wenig correspondiren, so kan doch in Einfalt vor GOtt sagen, daß ich dich liebe, und mich im Geist mit dir vereiniget finde, auch daß mir dein letzteres Schreiben vom 17ten Jan.

— 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).