By faith we are born again and made blessed children of God. But we are not to remain "babes," weak and feeble in faith, but are to grow in the knowledge of saving truth and to walk securely and firmly in the ways of God. As newborn babes can thrive only on pure milk, so our faith can grow strong only through the "sincere milk of the Word"; and we shall hunger for it and never grow tired of it, no matter how old we grow in years, if we have tasted how gracious the Lord has been to us. Good, pure milk gives new life and strength even to old men and women.

Now, there is a precious little book that contains the sincere milk of the faith-sustaining Word of God in most palatable form. That book is known as Luther's Small Catechism. Leopold Ranke, the great historian, writes of this blessed book: "The Catechism which Luther published in 1529, and of which he says that, as old a doctor as he was, he himself used it as his prayer, is as childlike as it is profound, as easy of grasp as it is unfathomable, as simple as it is sublime. Happy the man who nourishes his soul with it, who clings to it! For every moment he possesses a changeless consolation; he has under a thin shell that kernel of truth which is enough for the wisest of the wise."

This little book has proved of inestimable blessing to the church in the past. It has planted the knowledge of Christ's saving truth in the hearts of countless millions of people. If things in the church are to change for the better, we shall have to return to a more devoted use of the Bible and the Catechism in our homes, in our Sunday schools, and in our churches. The prevailing indifference to pure Gospel doctrine in many churches, the woeful ignorance of even the simplest Bible truths we meet with so often, are partly due to our sad neglect of the Catechism. Parents, teachers, and, above all, our pastors must learn to teach the Catechism to our children and people, as did our Lutheran forefathers, who thought so highly of the precious little book that they made it one of the Confessions of our church.

[devotion text by Rev. F. W. Herzberger (1920) -
from the Family Altar - CPH (1957 edition)]
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