Dr. Martin Luther's
Interpretation of the First Book of Moses.
Second part.
Help yourselves then, O help yourselves, dear Lutheran Christians and church servants! God now stands again, as it were, on the market of this world and offers you once again a precious commodity for an unprecedentedly low price in his open store, namely the swan song of His highly blessed armory, Luther's, the sweetest song which he once sang in the face of his approaching death. You cannot find a better reading of God's Word. Once you have read into this book, you cannot read your fill of it. Luther's gift, no matter how high, important and difficult matters he deals with, to entertain and delight the reader at the same time, is reflected in none of his writings so wonderfully as in this writing. Reading it is therefore not only richly instructive, but also a pleasure, an amusement, a delight. Whoever, therefore, does not yet have the first part of the same, should hurriedly acquire it, and if he cannot now win the prize for the second part at the same time, he should postpone the acquisition of this part, too, until later. Should we, however, encourage someone who already owns and has read the first part with many words to now acquire the second one as well? This would undoubtedly be a completely unnecessary effort. For those who have tasted this food need no encouragement to eat more, but only the news that in the second part Luther serves his readers ever more tasty dishes. —
As far as the price of the second part is concerned, it cannot be supplied at the price at which the first part was issued. The price for the second part is $4.50. The latter is not only just as excellently equipped, it is also considerably larger. It contains first of all highly valuable forewords in 43 columns, secondly, text in 2091 columns and finally an exceedingly rich index in 176 columns, so that the whole volume comprises 2210 columns in 1100 large quarto pages. Everyone will therefore admit that even at the somewhat higher price it is not about money, but merely of spreading the wonderful work as widely as possible. The threefold index newly prepared by Mr. Christian Körner with the utmost diligence and with admirable skill, of which the first contains a Hebrew word index, the second a Scripture passage index and the third a subject index, gives the two volumes a double value. Therefore, the Lutheran Church in our country cannot express its gratitude enough to him, as well as to Licentiate Stöckhardt and his assistant, Mr. Kähler, who have gladly taken the trouble of producing a thoroughly revised new edition of this invaluable work. Only he who has ever had to do similar work can appreciate the tremendous amount of work that these men have had to do. —
The next volume, which should follow this second one as soon as possible (with the revision and printing of which a good start has already been made), will be the eleventh of Walch's edition, which contains the Gospel portion of Luther's Church Postils. It is precisely with this part that the continuation of the publication of Luther's complete writings is to take place, because, as is well known, Luther's house postils are found in very many of our families, but the incomparable Church Postils, this first great Reformation writing of Luther, is only rarely found in the homes of our readers. Hopefully, this institution will also find general approval. Walch, too, has not published his twenty-four volumes in order, but according to need, soon this one, soon that one, and has therefore, for example, had the eleventh volume follow the eighth and the twenty-second volume follow the thirteenth. —
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