How in the feeling of our inability we must resign ourselves wholly and as we are to God and His leading.

The Hundred and Fourteenth Letter.

How in the feeling of our inability we must resign ourselves wholly and as we are to God and His leading.

In Jesus, our dearest Savior, dearly beloved sister!

The less opportunity I have to say something to you orally concerning your state of mind, the more I find myself moved to offer you and your state up to God and to commend you, and such I do with quiet, and in childlike trust, that the Faithful One will also execute it faithfully with you. God's way over you is singular, but adorable and good, singular also therein, that He (as it appears) will little allow your own and other creatures' help and looking-to thereby. He alone will have the honor of your redemption and blessedness. Yes, Amen, thus is it right! To Him then shall and will we resign ourselves wholly, and as we are; and without Caring or thinking for ourselves, let His hand make with us. Ah yes, we think, who could only do it so! No, we cannot, and must not be able; God can, and executes it even in our Not-being-able. Who is to resign himself and as it were lose himself in God's hand, he must have no ability left in his own hand. We always want to help ourselves, and our Helping is only Hindering. And from that also must the Lord's hand help us; and His Helping sometimes appears to us also a Hindering. He lets us feel, experience and meet just the contrary of that after which we long: What does that not cost! Own working, own Thinking, own Caring pursues us, even there where we would escape it: What distress that gives! To have nothing in the creature, nothing in oneself, and (as we believe) also nothing to have in God: that is great poverty, distress and death; not only once but a hundred times. And yet, dear sister, we must just through this Nothing, through this distress and death be brought thither whither we desire, namely to God and to His divine life in us. All such experiences are to annihilate us, that at last God may become All in us; they are to take from us all firmness in ourselves, that we may truly sink, and can let ourselves loose into the hand of our good God. Alone, this hand we do not see, and yet it is so inmost-near to us; this hand holds and governs us, also in the dark and without our recognizing it; this divine hand holds you also, dear sister, the less you can hold yourself, and will surely execute His work in you, also without His needing your hand and mine. I know what the Lord has done on your soul and has laid in your ground: Only be of courage in God and upon pure grace: Bear yourself as you are and as you can; until God gives grace, that you can wholly let yourself fall, and lose yourself forever in God your Origin and Resting-point! This my heart wishes you, and thereto will I offer you up to the Lord and hold you as I am able. If God gives it you, then think also of me. I greet with brotherly hearts, and remain through grace

Your Mülheim, obliged weak the 18th of February, 1762. brother.

German

Der hundertundvierzehnte Brief.

Wie wir beym Gefühl unseres Unvermögens uns ganz und wie wir sind, an GOtt und seine Führung überlassen müssen.

In JEsu, unserem theuresten Heylande herzlich geliebte Schwester!

Je weniger ich Gelegenheit habe, dir mündlich etwas über deinen Gemüths-Zustand zu sagen, desto mehr finde ich mich bewogen, dich und deinen Zustand GOtt aufzuopfern und anzubefehlen, und solches thue ich mit Ruhe, und im kindlichen Vertrauen, daß der Getreue es auch bey dir getreulich ausführen werde.

— 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).