Of four kinds of degrees of love to God.

The Hundred and Seventh Letter.

Of four kinds of degrees of love to God.

Dearest brother!

Your last I received yesterday afternoon. —— Yes, yes! may love be your greeting, your life and your well-being! O Love! take us so in, that we forget ourselves, and all our misery, and fall gently asleep in Thee, and sleeping (as the children in the cradle) may sleep away all fright-images, Amen!

Yes! where is love? Answer: God is love, most inwardly=unmovably=near, even then, when the contrary seems near. 1. The God-seeking love feels only want and unrest; it seeks in the church, in the Bible, in all good books and people; it would run to the end of the world; it seeks God, without knowing how and where to find Him; yes, God makes it seek. Happy hour though! when the Lord, meeting it, bids it stand still, and says: It is I that speak with you. 2. The love of feeling, when the soul receives refreshing love-inflows; that makes cheerful, fervent and effectual, moves also to the bravest resolutions and offerings-up, which God notes, and holds the soul to its word: Although this great-seeming fire often has much of the straw of self-love. 3. The love of inward affection, when the magnetic power of the essential love of God touches the ground of the soul, and draws it to Himself, so that it is drawn gently and yet mightily in to the mid-point, to cling through quiet tender affections wholly and alone to the Beloved. Blessed calling! 4. The love of high esteem, which indeed is given through the one or the other of what has just been mentioned, but can also be poured in unawares, and is found sometimes with, sometimes without all the aforesaid in the soul, even in all dryness, darkness and nakedness. To honor God, this great, blessed, all-sufficient, all-worthy Being, to confess Him, to bow and bend before Him with still reverence; to adore this Being with surrender of all aims upon oneself — that is then deeply impressed and weighty upon the soul, even if it (because all the aforesaid often fails) does not recognize this weightiness; and yet this love of high esteem is the purest love.

A word in your last moves me to write this so in haste of the difference of love; but because the time is gone, and visits are here, I cannot spread myself further. Let us love as we can, and so as love works us, until we are able perfectly above! —

My household greet, with me, right heartily, and are still in the ordinary. I also greet all the dear fellow-pilgrims there. I must break off. I remain through grace

Your Mülheim, obliged weak the 22nd of July, 1768. brother.

German

Der hundertundsiebente Brief.

Von viererley Graden der Liebe zu GOtt.

Liebster Bruder!

Dein Letzteres erhielte gestern Nachmittag. —— Ja, ja! die Liebe sey dein Gruß, dein Leben und dein Wohlleben!

— 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).