The Lutheran Church believes in a Way of being saved.  She has a positive system of faith.  Her system of the doctrines and methods of Grace is a complete, a consistent, a simple, an attractive one.  It avoids the contradictions and difficulties of other ways and systems.  It is thoroughly loyal to God’s Word.  Where it differs from other systems and faiths, it is because it abides by and bows to what is written, while others depart from and change the record to suit their reasons.  It gives all the glory of salvation to God.  It throws all the responsibility of being saved on man.  It is indeed the highway of the Lord, where the redeemed can walk in safety and in joy.  It is the old path, the good Way wherein men can find rest unto their souls.  It is the Way trodden by Patriarchs, Prophets, and ancient servants of God.  It is the Way of the Apostles, and Martyrs, and Confessors of the early Church—­the Way that became obscured and almost hidden during the dark ages.  It is the Way for the bringing to light and re-opening of which God raised up Martin Luther.

Yes, the nominally Christian Church had largely lost that Way.  God wanted to put her right again.  For this purpose He raised up the great Reformer.  Is it not reasonable to believe that He would lead him and guide him and enlighten him to know and point out this Way aright?  If the Lutheran Reformation was a work of God, does it need constant improvements and repetitions?  No! we believe that God led Luther aright, that the Way of Salvation to which He recalled the Church through him is the Divine Way.  Millions have walked in it since his day, and found it a good, safe, and happy Way.  No one who has ever left it for another way has gained thereby.

To abandon the Lutheran Church for another is to exchange a system that is based on sound and well-established principles of interpretation, logical, consistent, thoroughly scriptural, and therefore changeless in the midst of changes, for one without fixed principles of interpretation, only partially loyal to the inspired record, more or less inconsistent, uncertain, shifting and changing with the whims or notions of a fickle age.

It is to exchange a faith that satisfies, brings peace, and manifests itself in a child-like, cheerful, joyous trust in an ever-living and ever-present Redeemer, for one that ofttimes perplexes, raises doubts, and is more or less moody and gloomy.  A faith that is built either on uncertain and ever-varying experience or on an inexorable and loveless decree, cannot be as steadfast and joyous as one that rests implicitly in a Redeemer, who tasted death for every man.