John Murray on the Importance of Catechesis

[TylerRay]

A precious excerpt from one of John Murray's children's classes at Knox Presbyterian Church:

Murray: You know, for those who get to heaven it must of course be a supreme joy to see whom, Nancy? What will be the supreme vision of heaven? Do you understand my question?

Nancy: No!

Murray: If you go to heaven, you expect to go to heaven, you hope to go to heaven, well, when you go to heaven whom do you want to see? Yes, with your physical eye as it were. I am thinking of the resurrection when we will be raised from the dead, when we will go into the final state of glory. Whom do you want to see most of all with your physical eye?

Nancy: My mother! -- I don't understand.

Murray: Who will be the centre of interest in heaven?

Nancy: God.

Murray: Who will be in heaven in the flesh? Which person of the Godhead? Don't you think of Christ? You see, Christ will have a body in heaven as well as you. He has a body today. Don't you see? God the Father doesn't have a body and God the Holy Spirit doesn't have a body. But the Son does have a body. Do you know the Shorter Catechism? Who is the only redeemer of God's elect, Martha?

Martha: The only Redeemer of God's elect is the Lord Jesus Christ who being the eternal Son of God, became man, and so was and continueth to be God and man in two distinct natures and one person forever.

Murray: Do you know the Shorter Catechism to the end, all through? Do you, Richard? Do you, Martha? You, Nancy? How old are you, Nancy?

Nancy: Thirteen.

Murray: Now everyone of you children should know the Shorter Catechism from the beginning to the end without a mistake by this age. Now that's without joking at all. At the age of twelve you ought to know the Shorter Catechism from beginning to end without even making a mistake. You don't know what you are missing! Get down to learning it, if you haven't already learned it! It will not only give you the most perfect human compendium of Christian truth that there is in the whole world but it will be the finest mental exercise and it will lay a foundation in your mind and in your life for a hundred other things as well as for true religion. The mere mental discipline of learning it with exactness down to each preposition is one of the best disciplines that we know of in this world in the field of education. The primary reason is to learn it for the purpose of having in your mind a comprehensive compendium of Christian truth, but even apart from that there are a hundred by-products. It will be invaluable to you through your whole life, and not only in this life but in the life which is to come.

This comes from Iain Murray's short biography of John Murray.