# Der Lutheraner_St. Louis Missouri_1854 05 09_S145
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Der Lutheraner.

"God's Word and Luther's doctrine pure shall to eternity endure."

Published by the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio and other States.

Edited by C. F. W. Walther.

Volume 10.  St. Louis, Mo., May 9, 1854.  No. 19.

Terms: Der Lutheraner appears once every two weeks at the yearly subscription price of One Dollar for out-of-town subscribers, who are to pay for it in advance and to bear the postage. — In St. Louis each single number is sold for 5 Cents. Only those letters which contain communications for the paper are to be addressed to the Editor; all others, however, which contain business matters, orders, cancellations, money, etc., are to be sent to this address: Mr. F. W. Barthel, care of C. F. W. Walther, St. Louis, Mo.

(Contributed for Der Lutheraner.)

The So-called Large Hanoverian Catechism,

Reviewed by Wege.

(Continuation.)

Of the Holy Ten Commandments.

The holy Ten Commandments are not Moses' work, but God's.

If they are God's work, then they are no defective enumeration of a few transgressions, but, as a work befitting the highest and wisest Lawgiver, the sum total of everything that God will have done and left undone.

That this is truly so, Christ the Lord Himself testifies, when He reduces the entire content of all the rest of the law and of the prophets (insofar as they enforce the law) to the 2 tables of the holy 10 Commandments. For of this He speaks when He says, Matt. 22, 40:

On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets,

therefore God Himself has distinguished these 10 Commandments in a quite peculiar manner.*)

1. Before the ten commandments were given, God Himself announced the time and place where He would give them, and also ordered a special preparation.

2. They were given not in a dream or in a vision, but in actual reality, with the attestation of a fearful majesty upon Mount Sinai, before the eyes and ears, not of Moses alone, but of a whole assembled people.

3. The 10 Commandments were not only spoken by God, but also written, and the writing took place twice.

Of the first tables, which Moses broke in holy zeal, we read in Exodus 24, 12:

And the LORD said unto Moses: Come up to me into the mount, and be there, and I will give thee tables of stone, and a law, and commandments which I have written, that thou mayest teach them.

Likewise Exodus 31, 18:

They (the two tables of testimony) were written with the finger of God.

Likewise Exodus 32, 15. 16:

Moses turned, and went down from the mount, and the two tables of the testimony were in his hand; the tables were written on both their sides. And the tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven upon the tables.

And of the second tables we read Exodus 34, 1:

Hew thee two tables of stone, and I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest.

Likewise Deut. 10, 1-4:

At that time the LORD said unto me: Hew thee two tables of stone—and I will write on the tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou brakest—And he wrote (Moses is narrating, so the little word he cannot be understood of Moses, for then he would have to say: then I wrote) on the tables, according to the first writing, the ten commandments, which the LORD spake unto you in the mount out of the midst of the fire in the day of the assembly.

4. The keeping of the 2 tables was not left to the discretion of Moses, but they had to be kept in the ark of the covenant; and the ark of the covenant in the tabernacle, and indeed in the Most Holy Place, and it was this ark of the covenant upon whose lid the cloud of grace took its seat or throne.

5. The ten commandments, in comparison with all the others, are especially emphasized as being the sum of the whole covenant, e.g. Deut. 4, 12. 13:

"And the LORD spake—and declared unto you his covenant—even the ten commandments,"

Therefore the Christian Church has from of old acknowledged them as divine.

Therefore they are also the first chief part in the catechism.

When now a Christian teacher wishes to prove his skill, he ought not to make light of the 10 Commandments, but demonstrate how in these short words so excellently great a content is hidden.

So Dr. Luther did, and a good Lutheran preacher or teacher should tread in these footsteps.

But what does the author of the Hanoverian Catechism do? In Question 215, p. 119, he asks:

"Where are some of the harshest injustices named and forbidden?"

and gives the answer:

"In the 10 Commandments!"

Thus: In the 10 Commandments only the harshest injustices are named and forbidden, and even these not once completely, but only some of them?!

Who—we ask in all seriousness—who, to whom the honor of God lies even in some measure at