Instruction unto childlike simplicity and unpleasantness.

The Hundred and Twenty-eighth Letter.

Instruction unto childlike simplicity and unpleasantness.

N. N.

Your agreeable letters I have from post-day to post-day well received, and considered. I see therein your changes in the mind, your manifold sufferings and disturbances with brotherly compassion, and that it will yet so hardly sink into the childlike simplicity and unpleasantness; although your latter gives me at the end good hope thereto.

That you build so much upon your presentiment, also yet so lightly suspect that this one or that would have such or other designs; that accords not with your calling. Children always think childishly, and suffer what is there, without thinking upon the issue.

It was lately very thankful unto me, that in a vexatious occasion you could nicely bow, accommodate yourselves, yea rejoice: That was childishly dealt; God be praised therefor! For there is nothing more miserable, than when one will serve God without willing to suffer, and without precisely willing to suffer that which is there; as when one looks upon the sufferings as something evil, whereas they are yet the most wholesome means of grace; or, when one thereby looks upon men, whereas yet the sweet God gives it out of sweet love. O! how dear will Jesus have you! And how will you gladden His and also my heart, when you become such a well- or rightly-natured Jesus-child! When you become such a child, then will you always more be inclined unto unpleasantness in all things; that is, that in all that which you do, or must do, you indeed go to work after best discernment, but do not pretend that it just succeed according to wish, or be approved of by others; for through this way God often exercises us wonderfully. We must then with Not-succeeding or Not-approving of others adore God's sweet will with possiblemost quietness. But in all the rest, which depends not upon you, you will be held very unpleasantly; be it now in regard of the action, or also of other things that are spoken and done, or that come. A child's sweet art stands therein, that it go as it goes.

I do not pretend that you should become wholly unfeeling and indifferent. One must gladly wish to see it well, and the evil must trouble; only the sensitiveness must not come into the inward little chamber, and disturb the mind; that were harm. But if one is unexpectedly disturbed, as often passes with weakness, then must such disturbance also be suffered out with possiblemost contentment. Turn with me, dear sister, much into the so inwardly-near sweet Jesus-heart, softly leaving all and also yourselves; there, there shall we blessedly find this innocent child-form insinuating itself unto us.

German

Der hundertundachtundzwanzigste Brief.

Anweisung zur Kinder-Einfalt und Unannehmlichkeit.

N. N. Eure angenehme Briefe hab ich von Posttag zu Posttag wohl erhalten, und erwogen. Ich sehe darin eure Abwechslungen im Gemüth, eure mancherley Leyden und Stöhrungen mit brüderlichem Mitleyden, und daß es sich noch so schwerlich in die Kinder-Einfalt und Unannehmlichkeit senken will; wiewohl euer Letzteres mir am Ende gute Hofnung dazu giebet.

— 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).