“The body without the spirit is dead, but it retains for a while the form; and while the form is there, hope may sometimes lie cherished that life will yet revisit it; but when even the form is gone, and the body fallen to ashes, unless God shall speak, hope is extinct forever.
“It is a sad thing to see the form robbed of the power; but there is one stage of misery below this. It is reached when the Church becomes so careless, so indolent, that she does not even keep up the form. And this was the condition of a large part of our Church. The power had vanished, and the form went with it. We take this position and defy contradiction, that the abandonment of her ancient usages, by our Church in this country originated in her deadness and not in her spirituality. – Charles Krauth