StL3a: Walther on Vol. 10—Luther's Catechetical writings (Der Lutheraner 1885)

      This continues from Part 2 (Table of Contents in Part 1) in a series on the St. Louis Edition (StL) of Luther's complete writings in English. — Only seven volumes of the StL were produced while Walther was living and only six of those were reviewed by Walther.  But fortunately for us, in 1885, 2 years before his passing, he wrote his last one, a stirring announcement and promotion of Volume 10, Luther's Catechetical writings.  After I completed the massive task of OCRing and machine translating all 25 volumes, I wanted to have blog posts that answered the question:

Why read Luther?  

I found my source material conveniently supplied by Luther's greatest promoter for reading Luther – for today.  What follows is a 5-part sub-series of Walther's book review of Volume 10 (other reviews will follow). So to find the answer to the above question, and why this edition, read Walther!

(From Der Lutheraner, vol. 41 p. 105-107 (No. 14, July 15, 1885)[EN] (all underlining and bolding follows Walther's emphasis):

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Dr. Martin Luther's

Complete Writings,

edited by

Dr. Johann Georg Walch.

Newly published on behalf of the Ministry of the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod

 of Missouri, Ohio and other States.

Tenth volume.

Containing Luther's Catechetical Writings.

St. Louis, Mo.

Luth. Concordia Publishing House (M. C. Barthel, Agent).

1885.

Again, by God's grace and with His faithful help, a new volume of the first American Lutheran edition of the incomparably valuable complete writings of our dear Reformer Luther is ready for dispatch. This is the tenth volume in the order followed by Walch. We announce the appearance of just this volume with very special joy. This volume contains the so-called catechetical writings of Luther, that is, not only the two catechisms, the Small and the Large, as they once came from Luther's hand in 1529, but also all those Luther writings that treat and explain any part of the chief parts of the Catechism. 

This tenth volume is therefore one of the most important after the postil volumes [sermon volumes 11, 12, 13a, 13b] and indispensable for the Lutheran Christian people. The editor, Pastor and Professor G. [Georg] Stöckhardt, has therefore made it his highest priority to produce this people’s volume of Luther's works as perfectly as possible and in accordance with its purpose. It is true that in this case the editor, in addition to his busy other offices, could not take the editorial work on his shoulders alone. If the completion of the work should not have to be postponed long, he needed essential help, not only mechanical help. But God, by His grace, has made it so cleverly that a candidate of the holy ministry, who emerged from our Concordia, has been found, who was quite excellently suited for the editorial work, namely Mr. Heinrich Bayer, who also subjected himself to this work with just as much diligence as efficiency and skill. While Pastor Stöckhardt mainly took over the revision and completion of Walch's detailed historical introduction of more than 100 quarto pages in all individual writings in this volume, Mr. Bayer edited these individual writings of more than 1100 quarto pages in consultation with the  editor-in-chief. 

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Walther informs us of another assistant editor, Heinrich Bayer, whose name is not given in any of the online library catalog listings for this edition. And Walther explains that we are the beneficiaries of his Latin scholarship. — Walther used the term "people's volume" for this volume.  He will explain this later in this promotional writing. — In the next Part 3b,  we learn more about the task of Latin translation and other details.