# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_April 1855_S126
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

126 On the Original Form of the Small Catechism, etc.

Discovered in a Low Saxon translation and accompanied by an investigation into the origin of the Small Catechism. Edited by E. Mönckeberg, pastor at St. Nikolai in Hamburg. Hamburg, 1851.

2. Dr. Martin Luther’s Small Catechism. Critically edited according to the original editions. A Contribution to the History of Catechetics, by Lic. K. F. Th. Schneider. Berlin, 1853.

I shall now attempt to compile the principal findings of these two instructive works, and above all to encourage pastors and schoolteachers to study them, as well as to encourage the other readers of this periodical to take an interest in the subjects treated in them.

For as long as thirteen years before composing his Small Catechism, Dr. Luther had already been teaching the catechism tirelessly, both in sermons and in other ways, and indeed in such a manner “that many people had improved.” The earliest catechetical work by Dr. L. that we possess consists of his sermons on the Ten Commandments from the years 1516 and 1517, which contain the most extensive exposition of this chief part (Walch’s edition III, 1693–1995). These were followed by the briefest exposition of the same subject, or The Transgression and Fulfillment of the Ten Commandments, from the year 1522.

The first catechetical work on the first three chief parts is A Short Form for Considering the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer, from the year 1520, in which the exposition of the first chief part also incorporates the above-mentioned work from 1522. (Walch X, 184 ff.) This splendid little book sold so rapidly that it went through five different editions in its very first year. Two years later, it gave rise to the so-called “Prayer Book.”*)

From the year 1517 we also have Dr. Luther’s sermons on the Lord’s Prayer (Walch VII, 1086 ff.), and from the year 1520 the Exhortation to Good Works, a masterly exposition of the Ten Commandments (Walch X, 1562 ff.). Through all these works, God made this servant of His ever richer in knowledge and experience and thus prepared him to compose the Small Catechism. But before he was able to do so, and because the demand for such a little book was becoming increasingly urgent, Dr. Luther in 1525 commissioned two of his associates, namely Jonas and Agricola, to compose a catechism, since he himself was too heavily occupied with other work, especially his Church Postil. Thus arose the so-called “Layman’s Bible,” which Lic. Schneider included as an appendix to his work and concerning which he says: “This is a most noteworthy catechetical monument from the earliest period of the Reformation, which likewise gives us

*) The Prayer Book edited by C. Kraußold is not the one by Dr. Luther, but one compiled according to the editor’s own selection. Only in the Wittenberg edition of Luther’s works does the Prayer Book appear as a whole; in the other editions, only individual parts of it are included. Dr. Luther considered it very useful and had it reprinted frequently.