# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1860_S66
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

66 The Diligent Practice of the Catechism in the Lutheran Church of Former Times.

How fortunate we are here compared with our fellow believers on the other side of the water! We need no official ordinances "by supreme command," and no threats of all sorts of coercive measures, in order to practice the catechism; the command of God the Most High, gladly to hear and learn His Word and consequently also its extract — namely, Dr. Luther's Small Catechism — the spirited and powerful prefaces of that dear man of God to his two catechisms, the unsurpassed model of his catechism expositions and of his other writings, seasoned throughout with catechism references, the desire and love thereby awakened in our zealous preachers to teach the catechism and in our salvation-hungry hearers to learn it, the growing experience of the overflowing blessing of this practice, and finally the manifold encouragements given us by the excellent catechism institutions of the Lutheran past — all this brings the practice of the catechism more and more into vogue among us. May God let this essay too serve that end!

On the necessity of catechism instruction in preaching and examination, Dr. Rudelbach expresses himself thus: "the stream of the Word of God must be channeled into smaller brooks; the truths of the Gospel must be brought much nearer to people's hearts; the Christian preacher must become, more after the model of the Apostle, all things to all people. — — There must be added a practical course of the whole doctrine of Christianity, which draws all its points gradually into its circuit."

The high merits of Dr. Luther with respect to the catechism Dr. R. depicts briefly and aptly thus: "That Martin Luther is the true father of the catechism in the evangelical church needs not be said, for everyone knows it: his heart, full of burning love and strong faith, drove him, before all else, to begin with the young, so that a generation might be formed in the fear of God and in true Christian knowledge. His experiences — especially those he had gathered as a visitor in the years 1527–1529 concerning the sorry ignorance and degradation of the people and the common man, as well as concerning the incompetence and unfitness of many pastors — obliged him to act early. Before the collective confession of the Evangelical Lutheran Church yet existed, the catechism was already in place; and even though Luther was not the first to come forward publicly with one (for Brenz and a few others had published catechisms shortly before), he was nevertheless the one who, by God's grace, gathered everything together most simply and most anointedly — so glorious a simplicity that one feels transported back, by it, into the earliest days of the confessing community of Christ. For this is exactly the seal of the Lutheran Reformation: that, just as it can legitimate itself historically in every way and manner, so also through symbol and catechism. — — More concisely and more anointedly than Luther has probably no one ever known how to bring out the divine greatness within the smallness of the catechism's content." In this connection reference is made to the prefaces of the two catechisms and to the passage in chapter XI of the Table Talk, which