---
title: 'B.M. Palmer on the Shorter Catechism'
type: post
author: 'R. Andrew Myers'
date: 2025-06-15
url: https://confessional.org/blog/2025-b-m-palmer-on-the-shorter-catechism
---

# B.M. Palmer on the Shorter Catechism

“Indeed we utter a long cherished conviction, when we say that next to the Bible, from which all that relates to God and the soul must be drawn, there are no books we would sooner recommend for an experimental and devotional use than the Calvinistic standards. We place them in the hands of children and think their office discharged when the ‘form of sound words’ is transferred to the memory. How few think (to appropriate a child’s expression,) to ‘learn these things by heart!’ Many a Christian will devour a whole library of books of devotion and pious biographies, trying to draw on a ready-made experience, as he would a glove, when a better manual of practical religion is almost thumbed out in the hands of his child. Let him put ninety-nine hundredths of these volumes into the fire, and thoroughly digest his Shorter Catechism, and he will come forth a stronger, brighter, happier Christian, and in sooner; time, than if he had read the memoirs of all the saints and martyrs from Abel until now.” — [**Benjamin M. Palmer**](/authors/benjamin-morgan-palmer) (1818-1902), *A Plea For Doctrine as the Instrument of Sanctification* (1849)