# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juli 1864_S207
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Christian Catechism; A Guide to Religious Instruction. 207

than the Hanoverian territorial church has, although it would be highly dangerous and ruinous to introduce the Missourian church constitution into the Hanoverian church now, and it would accordingly, for it, at present, be an unsuitable, dangerous constitution. — Nevertheless, too high a value ought not to be placed on a constitution as such; what matters above all is the spirit; without the right life, even the best constitution is but an empty shadow. Still, the principle must remain firm: as the pope is the apex and crown of the Roman constitution, so the congregation is the apex and crown of the Lutheran church constitution.

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(Submitted by Pastor G. Löber.)
Christian Catechism;
A Guide to Religious Instruction in School and Home, by
Philip Schaff, Doctor and Professor of Theology.

It is well known how zealously many church-minded German-Americans strive to unite the adherents of all confessions, chiefly the Reformed and the Lutherans. Although many years of experience have ever stood disruptively in their way, they nevertheless think they must not give up their undertaking. A new attempt along this path shows itself in the book whose title is given above. If the intention of the author were truly to set forth, "briefly and to the point," the pure doctrine of God's Word for all those for whom the book is intended, then the title of a Christian catechism — which is thus meant and supposed to contain the preaching of Christ — ought to awaken great hopes. But that this is not so is proven by its execution. To show this briefly, along with some other deficiencies, is the purpose of the present work.

In order to become acquainted with the author's standpoint, it will be necessary to look over briefly the preface to the second edition. He begins it: "I am not ashamed to publish a children's catechism." One sees that it cost the good Doctor some effort to submit himself to such a work, which, in his opinion, as it seems, would really only be a task for the inexperienced and for novices in Christianity; after mature reflection he does, to be sure, encourage himself by saying: "It is, for every Christian, even the most experienced, a deep need to return from time to time to the simplest elements of religion, and to become a child with the children" — but he himself refutes this by the warning of Christ cited immediately before: "Except ye be converted, and become as little children," etc. (are we to be converted only from time to time?); and in part by what follows: "It is precisely the simplest elements of our faith that are at the same time its essential foundations." To return to them from time to time would mean acknowledging them as essential only from time to time, would mean letting a house rest upon its foundation only from time to time. If Christ, in his first sermon on the