Copy and paste into worship material
To this holy office you propose to devote yourselves. I wish you may feel your call in throbs of desire and hope. It is of that reality that it cannot suffer the deduction of any falsehood. And it is my duty to say to you that the need was never greater of a new revelation than now. From the views I have already addressed, you will infer the sad conviction, which I share, I believe, with numbers, of the universal decay and almost death of faith in society. The soul is not preached. The Church seems to totter to its fall, almost all life extinct....
And now let us do what we can to rekindle the smouldering, nigh quenched fire on the altar. The evils of the church that now is are manifest. The question returns, what shall we do?
(Emerson, Harvard Divinity School Address, July 15th, 1838)