# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1860_S68
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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

hear it expounded and learn to understand what each part contains in itself, so that they can also recite it, as they have heard it, and answer rightly and properly when asked, so that it not be preached without use and fruit; for this is why we take such pains to preach the catechism often beforehand, so that it be beaten into the young — not loftily nor sharply, but briefly and in the very simplest way, so that it may enter well into them and remain in their memory."

On this the church orders contain no uniform provisions, in that one class of them, in faithful adherence to Dr. Luther's aforementioned counsels, prescribes the connection of the sermon with the examination, while the other class conducts the two separately and gives more detailed provisions sometimes about the sermon, sometimes about the examination — the latter, as we find, being the more frequent case. The prescriptions of those church orders must, of course, carry particular weight with us on account of their agreement with Dr. Luther's model. On this point Dr. R. names only three church orders, to which I wish to add a few more.

In the Margravial Ansbach and Nuremberg Church Order of the year 1533 — whose provisions concerning the catechism passed over into the Brandenburg order of 1540, and later also into the Mecklenburg one — there is found a reprint of the short children's sermons which, according to the testimony of Strobel in his biography of Veit Dietrich, have this faithful pupil of Dr. Luther as their author, and which are to be "read aloud to the people word for word, the children meanwhile being questioned as to the correct understanding of the catechism, the answer then being taken from Luther's Small Catechism." They have been newly republished in Nuremberg in 1831 (9 Kreuzer) and in Berlin in 1839, and deserve, in my conviction, the preference over all similar catechism sermons down to our own time. Dr. R. recommends them in the following words: "We wished, God granting grace for it, to begin with a form such as is displayed in the 'children's sermons' just mentioned, where biblical truth is set forth in the very simplest way and, as it were, worked directly into life; for we have before us a young people who must first be spiritually formed, so that here, too, the form cannot be thought too accommodating or well-adapted."

Still clearer provisions are contained in the Electoral Saxon Visitation Articles of the year 1557, in which, among other things, the preachers are instructed "to preach the catechism to the young people once or twice a week, and to examine the children on it." Sunday afternoon in particular was set aside for the catechism sermon. "But whatever time it may be, they shall diligently present the catechism to the young, and in teaching it shall not display their own skill and cleverness, but shall present the children's instruction in the very simplest way and always in one and the same form and manner."

The Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel Church Order of the year 1569,