The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church

by G. H. Gerberding

After these beginnings have thus been made, and while the home instruction is still going on, the work of the Sunday-school teacher comes in as a help to the home class. In every Sunday-school class there ought to be, with each lesson, some instruction in the Catechism. To this end each teacher, in a Lutheran Sunday-school, ought to be familiarly at home in this most important text-book. The teacher should endeavor so to teach these lessons, that the pupil would learn to love and appreciate the Catechism more and more. Thus, the school ought to be a helper to the home. And thus, home and school together, working in harmony for the same end, would prepare the children for the pastor's catechetical class.

If this good old-fashioned custom were kept up in all our households and schools, then would the pastor's catechetical class be more of a pleasure and a profit to himself and his catechumens. It would then be the pastor's part, as it should be, to review the contents with his class, and thus to find how well the preparatory work had been done. Then could he devote his time and energy to what is really the pastor's part of the work, viz., to explain and set forth clearly the meaning of the Catechism, and show how it all applies to the heart and life of every one.

It is not at all the pastor's place, and it should never be expected of him, to act the school-master, to see to and oversee the memorizing of the answers. It is his office to expound and apply the truth, to make the doctrines clear to the minds of the learners, and to show how they are all related to the individual life.

But, alas, how little is this understood or practiced! How many parents, who call themselves Christians, and Lutherans, seem to think that they have nothing to do in this whole matter! They seem to think that if they send their children once a week, for a few months, to the pastor's class, they have done their whole duty. They do not so much as help and encourage the children to learn the lessons that the pastor assigns. And thus does this part of the pastor's work, which ought to be among the most delightful of all his duties, become wearisome to the flesh and vexatious to the spirit. Scarcely anywhere else in all his duties does a pastor feel so helpless and hopeless and discouraged, as when standing week after week before a class of young people who have such poor instructors at home.

Christian parents, if you desire your sons and your daughters to become steadfast and useful members of the Church of Christ, see to it that you do your part in their religious instruction. Insist on it, and even

use your parental authority, if necessary, that your children learn the Catechism and regularly attend the pastor's instructions.

We believe that the trouble in this matter lies largely in the fact that catechisation has become unpopular in our fast age. It is looked upon as a mark of old-fogyism, if not as an evidence of the absence of "spiritual religion!" The new measures and methods of modern revivals are more acceptable to the fickle multitude. They seem to point out a shorter route and quicker time to heaven. As a boy once said to the writer: "I don't want to belong to your church, because I would have to study the Catechism all winter, and down at the other church I can 'get through' in one night." That boy expressed about as clearly and tersely as could well be done, the popular sentiment of the day.

Yielding to this popular sentiment, many churches, that once adhered strictly and firmly to the catechetical method, having either dropped it entirely or are gradually giving it up. And in order to clothe their spiritual cowardliness and laziness in a pious garb, they say: "The Bible is enough for us." "We don't need any man-made Catechisms." "It is all wrong anyhow to place a human book on a level with or above the Bible." "We and our children want our religion

from the Spirit of God, and not from a Church Catechism," etc., etc.

Do such people know what they are talking about, or do they sometimes use these pious phrases to quiet a guilty conscience? Do they know what a Catechism is?