essed and
applied to heart, and conscience, and life. Drive it home personally
and individually to the impenitent pupil. See him by himself, visit
him in his home, teach him in his class. Cease not your prayers and
your efforts till the Word so lodge and fasten itself in the mind and
conscience that it makes him realize his own sinfulness and need of a
Saviour, and also that Saviour's readiness to save. This is God's way
of salvation. This is the Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church. The
Sunday-school teacher who follows this way will win souls. The
impenitent sinners of his class will be brought to repentance toward
God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ: or in one word, they will be
converted; whilst those who are already Christ's will _grow in Grace
and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ_.

CHAPTER IX.

CATECHISATION.

We have spoken of the importance and benefits of home training
and instruction. We endeavored to show that Christian parents are
under the most solemn obligation to instruct their children in the
truth of God's Word. We also endeavored to show that, in order to give
their children a clear understanding of the saving truths of the
Bible, they could do no better than to diligently teach them Luther's
Small Catechism; that this was really Luther's idea and purpose when
he wrote that excellent little religious manual; that the first
catechetical class ought indeed to be in the family, with father and
mother as teachers;--that this home class ought to be carried on so
long and so persistently, that in it the children would become
perfectly familiar with the contents of the book; so familiar indeed,
that they would know all the parts that Luther wrote perfectly by
heart. Luther's Small Cathechism, _i.e._, the parts that Luther wrote
himself, is really quite a small book. By giving only a little time
and attention to it each week, the parents could easily, in a few
years, have all their children know it as perfectly as they know their
multiplication table. And such ought to be the case.

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,
ou