The Spiritual Flower Garden: The First Complete English Translation of Gerhard Tersteegen's Geistliches Blumengärtlein, Volume Two

The hymns Wesley loved — and the daily wisdom no English reader has ever had whole.

For nearly three hundred years, one of Christianity's most treasured devotional works has remained locked behind a language barrier. Gerhard Tersteegen's Geistliches Blumengärtlein — The Spiritual Flower Garden — shaped German-speaking piety for generations, yet no complete English translation has ever existed. Until now.

Gerhard Tersteegen (1697–1769) was a Reformed Pietist mystic whose influence spread far beyond his quiet life as a ribbon-weaver in Mülheim. After five years of spiritual darkness, he emerged with a voice that combined the contemplative depth of the Rhenish mystics with the practical warmth of evangelical devotion. His writings do not argue or perform — they simply speak, with the calm authority of one who knows the terrain because he has walked it.

Volume Two contains:

BOOK THREE: SPIRITUAL SONGS AND DEVOTIONS. One hundred twenty-two hymns spanning the full range of Christian experience — longing for God, the way of the cross, yieldedness, divine love, and eternal hope. John Wesley carried a few into English, where "Thou Hidden Love of God" and "Lo, God Is Here" became beloved; the vast majority speak here in English for the first time.

THE LOTTERY OF THE DEVOUT. All 412 brief maxims, once drawn at random — one lot for the day — each distilling a lifetime of spiritual wisdom into a single pointed truth: seeds for the soul to carry through the day. Complete in English at last.

Tersteegen's voice remains direct, concrete, and unflinching about the cost of following Christ into the depths. This is not comfortable devotional reading. It is a map for those willing to lose themselves in order to find the One who waits in the soul's Ground.

This translation preserves Tersteegen's theological precision while rendering his voice in clear, contemporary English. Key mystical terms — Gelassenheit (yieldedness), Gemüt (inmost heart), Seelengrund (Ground of the soul) — are translated according to their historical meaning within the Rhenish mystical tradition, not flattened into modern psychological equivalents. A glossary of key terms is included.

Volume One, available separately, contains Book One (Short Edifying Verses) and Book Two (Meditations on Sayings of the Prophets). Together, the two volumes form the complete Spiritual Flower Garden.

My good and portion is God above all;
A lovely lot has fallen to me.
—from Lot 46