Hidden in God
The Life and Writings of Gerhard Tersteegen
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ISBN: 978-1-971776-03-3 (Paperback) · 978-1-971776-04-0 (Hardcover) · 978-1-971776-02-6 (eBook)
From the book
The contents and the first three pages
The contents page and the opening of Part One, The Life, exactly as it is set in the printed book. Choose a page, and click it to read at full size.
He wanted to disappear. Seekers crossed Europe to find him.
Gerhard Tersteegen (1697–1769) was a ribbon-weaver who never married, held no office, and gave away what he earned. Yet his letters and counsel drew visitors to his room in Mülheim from Switzerland, Holland, England, and Sweden, and his hymns, among them “Lo, God Is Here” and “Thou Hidden Love of God,” were carried into English by John Wesley and are still sung today.
He wanted only one thing remembered: “I sincerely wish that the name of Tersteegen might be forgotten by everyone, and on the contrary that the name of Jesus might be impressed on every heart.”
Hidden in God gathers his life and writings in one volume: the whole of Samuel Jackson’s 1832 Life and Character of Gerhard Tersteegen in modern English, nothing omitted, with the letters and hymns newly translated from the German. Jackson’s English has been carefully modernized for today’s reader: archaic words updated and long nineteenth-century sentences untangled, with Tersteegen’s warmth and meaning left intact.
Inside:
- The Life: from the merchant’s apprentice who left the counting-house for the loom, through five years of spiritual darkness and the covenant he signed in his own blood, to the awakening of 1750–51 and his death in 1769.
- Twenty-nine letters: twenty-three of spiritual direction to people in real trouble, with his counsel on marriage, his letter to the awakened of Moers, and rules for a society of Christians living together.
- A sermon: “On the Constraining Love of Christ,” preached at Mülheim in 1751.
- Nine treatises: on faith and justification, inward prayer, true godliness, and the excellent way of love.
- His hymns: including the originals of the two Wesley carried into English.
For readers of Brother Lawrence, Thomas à Kempis, and Fénelon, and for anyone weary of religion as mere activity and longing for God Himself.
Learn more: Read our article Who Was Gerhard Tersteegen? For forty short readings drawn from his letters, see God Is Here; his complete letters are free at gerhardtersteegen.com.
About the Author and Editor
Gerhard Tersteegen (1697–1769) was a Reformed Pietist, hymn writer, and spiritual guide, a ribbon-weaver in Mülheim who left the loom to give his life to prayer and spiritual counsel. This edition was prepared by Jarred Fenlason, D.Min., translator of The Spiritual Flower Garden and of Tersteegen’s complete letters, who modernized Samuel Jackson’s 1832 translation and translated the letters and hymns anew.
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