To all Laymen of Evangelical Christendom interested in developing adeeper Christian Life, on the basis of the spiritual classics of ourProtestant Church Fathers, this volume of sermons that apply the puredoctrine of God's Word to everyday life, is prayerfully dedicated.
Here comes the English Luther in his twelfth visit to your home. Inpeasant boots, decorated by no star of worldliness nor even by thecross of churchliness, but by the Book from heaven pressed to hisheart in a firm attitude of earnest prayer, he comes as the man ofprayer and of the one Book, a familiar friend, to help you to livethe simple Christian life.
This volume of twenty-four practical sermons from Trinity Sunday toAdvent marks an epoch in that it completes in an unabridged form onebranch of Luther's writings, the eight volumes of his Gospel andEpistle Postil. They are bound in uniform size, numbered as in theErlangen edition from the seventh to the fourteenth volume inclusive,paragraphed for convenient reference according to the Walch editionwith summaries of the Gospel sermons by Bugenhagen. The few subheadsinserted in the text are a new feature for American readers.
These eight volumes of 175 sermons and 3,110 pages are the classicdevotional literature of Protestantism. They were preached by itsfounder to the mother congregation of Evangelical Christendom in thebirth-period of the greatest factor in modern civilization. Nocollection of Evangelical sermons has passed through more editionsand been printed in more languages, none more loved and praised, nonemore read and prayed. They will be a valuable addition to the meagersermon literature on the Epistle texts in the English language.English Protestants will hereafter have no excuse for unacquaintancewith Luther's spiritual writings.
What Luther's two Catechisms were in the school room to teach theChristian faith to the youth, that these sermons were in the homes todevelop the same faith in adults. They have maintained their goodname wherever translated until the present and their contents areabove the reach of critics. These Epistle sermons especially applythe Christian truth to everyday life. The order in developing theChristian life with the best help from the prince of the Teutonicchurch fathers, should be from the Small to the Large Catechism andthen to his Epistle sermons. Blessed the pastor and congregation whocan lead the youth to "Church Postil Reading"—to read in harmonywith their church-going. Blessed is the immigrant or diasporamissionary who finds his people reading them in the new settlementshe visits.
Next to the Bible and Catechisms no books did more to awaken andsustain the great Evangelical religious