Not only is this Catechism neglected, but it is and has been much abused. Abused, not only by its enemies, who have said hard things against it, but it has been and still is abused, like all good things, by its professed friends. And doubtless it is the abuse by its friends that is largely responsible for the neglect and contempt into which it has sometimes fallen. Thus in the family, it is still too often taught as a mere task. The home teacher often has no higher aim than that the children should learn it by rote—learn to rattle it off like the multiplication table, or the rules of grammar.
Worse than this, it has often been used as an instrument
of punishment. A child has done something wrong. It is angrily told that for this it must learn a page or two of the Catechism! The task is sullenly learned and sullenly recited; and the Catechism is hated worse than the sin committed. Then too, it is slurred over in the Sunday-schools, without an earnest word of explanation or application. The learner does not realize that it is meant to change the heart and influence the life.
This same sad mistake is also made by many pastors in the catechetical class. Strange as it may seem, this mistake is most commonly made by those very pastors who profess to be the warmest friends of and the most zealous insisters on the catechisation of every lamb in the flock. Thus we find not a few pastors who catechise their classes after the schoolmaster fashion. They go through the exercise in a perfunctory, formal manner. They insist on the letter of the text, and are satisfied if their pupils know the lessons well by rote! To urge on the dull and lazy pupil they will scold and rage, and even use the rod! The Catechism becomes a sort of text-book. The pupils get out of it a certain amount of head knowledge. There are so many answers and so many proof-texts that must be committed to memory. And when all this is well gotten and recited by rote, the teacher is
satisfied, the pupil is praised, imagines that he has gotten all the good out of that book, and is glad he is done with it!
Now we would not for a moment depreciate the memorizing of the Catechism. It is of the most vital importance, and cannot be too strongly urged. What we object to—and we cannot object too strenuously—is the idea that head knowledge is enough! There must of course be head knowledge. The memory should store up all the precious pearls of God's truth that are found in the Catechism. The mind must grasp these truths and understand their meaning and their relation to one another. But if it stops here, it is not yet a knowledge that maketh wise unto salvation. In spiritual matters the enlightening or instructing of the intellect is not the end aimed at, but only a means to an end. The end aimed at must always be the renewal of the heart. The heart must be reached through the understanding. To know about Christ is not life eternal. I must know about Him before I can know Him. But I might know all about Him, be perfectly clear as to His person and His work, and stop there, without ever knowing Him as heart only can know heart, as my personal Saviour and loving friend, my Lord and my God.
Here, we fear, many ministers make a sad mistake.
They are too easily satisfied with a mere outward knowledge of the truth. They forget that even if it were possible to "understand all mystery and all knowledge"—intellectually—and not have charity, i.e., deep, fervent, glowing love to God in Christ, springing from a truly penitent and believing heart, it would profit nothing. The true aim and end of all catechetical instruction in the Sunday-school, in the family, and especially in the pastor's class, should ever be a penitent, believing and loving heart in each catechumen.
We have, in a former chapter, shown the duty of the Sunday-school teacher in this matter. The pastor should likewise use all diligence to find out in whom, among his catechumens, the germs of the divine life, implanted in baptism, have been kept alive, and in whom they are dormant. Where the divine life, given in holy baptism has been fostered and cherished—where there has been an uninterrupted enjoyment of baptismal Grace, more or less clear and conscious—there it is the pastor's privilege to give clearer views of truth and Grace, to lead into a more intelligent and hearty fellowship with the Redeemer, to deepen penitence and strengthen faith through the quickening truth of God's word.
Where, on the other hand, the seeds of baptismal