Introduction

Few pages have done so much good with so few words. In 107 questions and answers, the Shorter Catechism runs through the whole Christian faith: who God is, what he has done, how he saves the sinner by Christ and what duty he requires of man. The Westminster Assembly prepared it at the same time as the Larger, with the same doctrine, but with another purpose: the Church of Scotland approved it as "a Directory for catechising such as are of weaker capacity". It is the way in: "the sincere milk of the word" by which the newborn believer begins to grow (1 Pet. 2:2).

Its brevity is not poverty, but the fruit of painstaking labour. Each answer weighs its words with theological precision, and many have remained engraved for ever in the memory of whole generations. The first answers the deepest question a man can ask: "Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever". And to the question "What is God?" it replies with one of the most admired definitions theology has ever given: "God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth".

It is made to be learned by heart. Almost every answer takes up the terms of its question, so that it stands on its own and can be recited without it. It was not written only to be read once, but to be repeated until the truth is written upon the heart, as God commanded Israel: "And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up" (Deut. 6:6-7).

That is why its natural place is the home. For centuries, in Scotland, in England and in America, parents taught it to their children, and ministers examined families upon it. Many who never read a treatise of theology knew its answers by heart and repeated them in sickness and on their deathbed. So was fulfilled what was said of Timothy, that "from a child" he had known "the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus" (2 Tim. 3:15).

Today many Christian parents leave the instruction of their children in other hands, and many churches have abandoned catechising, thinking it dry or old-fashioned. But the child who learns why he was created, who God is and what Christ has done for sinners carries with him, for his whole life, a foundation that no fashion will be able to take from him: "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it" (Prov. 22:6). Nor is it only for children: to the grown believer who never learned it, it offers, in a few pages, the whole framework of the faith, which he may afterwards deepen in the Larger Catechism and in the Confession.

The Catechism is preceded by the act with which the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland approved it in 1648.