For the clergy, who needed a model for their preaching, and for the congregations to whom their pastors, owing to their own incompetence, had to preach the sermons of others, nothing more suitable for this purpose could be offered than Luther's Church-Postills. Its use, where necessary, was recommended. It had shortly before been completed; that is to say, after Luther in 1525 had finished the portion for the winter half-year, his friend Roth, of Zwickau, brought out in 1527 a complete edition of sermons for the Sundays of the summer half-year, and all the feast-days and holidays, compiled from printed copies and manuscripts of detached sermons. The most urgent task, however, that Luther now felt himself bound to perform, was the compilation of a Catechism suitable for the people, and, above all, for the young. Four years before, he had endeavoured to encourage friends to write one. His 'German Mass' of 1526 said: 'The first thing wanted for German public worship is a rough, simple, good Catechism;' and further on in that treatise he declared that he knew of no better way of imparting such Christian instruction, than by means of the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer, for they summed up, briefly and simply, almost all that was necessary for a Christian to know. He now took in hand at once, early in 1529, and amidst all the business of the visitations, a larger work, which was intended to instruct the clergy how to understand and explain those three main articles of the faith, and also the doctrines of Baptism and the Lord's Supper. This work is his so-called 'Greater Catechism,' originally entitled simply the 'German Catechism.' Shortly afterwards followed the 'Little Catechism,'--called also the 'Enchiridion'--which contains in an abbreviated form, adapted to children and simple understandings, the contents of his larger work, set out here in the form of question and answer. 'I have been induced and compelled,' says Luther in his introduction, 'to compress this Catechism, or Christian teaching, into this modest and simple form, by the wretched and lamentable state of spiritual destitution which I have recently in my visitations found to prevail among the people. God help me! how much misery have I seen! The common folk, especially the villagers, know absolutely nothing of Christian doctrine, and alas, many of the parish priests are almost too ignorant or incapable to teach them!' He entreats therefore his brother clergymen to take pity on the people, to assist in bringing home the Catechism to them, and more particularly to the young; and to this end, if no better way commended itself, to take these forms before them, and explain them word by word. For the use of the pastors, he added to this Catechism a short tract on Marriage, and in the second edition, which followed immediately after, he subjoined a reprint of his treatise on Baptism, which he had published three years before.