Am I a builder, or a wrecker?

I saw them tearing a building down,
A gang of men in a dusty town.
With ‘yo heave ho’ and a lusty yell,
They swung a beam and the side wall fell.

I asked the foreman if these men were skilled
As the men he’d hire, if he were to build.
He laughed and said, ‘Oh, no indeed.
Common labour is all I need.’

For those men can wreck in a day or two,
What builders had taken years to do.
I asked myself as I went my way,
Which kind of role am I to play?

Am I the builder who builds with care,
Measuring life by the rule and square?
Or am I the wrecker who walks the town,
Content with the role of tearing down?

(Illustrations for Biblical Preaching, 117f, Baker Book House)

John Wesley on ‘a catholic spirit’

Here’s a fine comment from John Wesley on Christian unity.  By ‘catholic spirit’, Wesley meant what we today would call an ‘inclusive’ attitude towards Christians of other ‘traditions’.  By ’speculative latitudinarianism’, he meant doctrinal indifference.  So to the quote:-

All Those Denominations

To be honest, one of the most serious problems of Protestantism has been its tendency to split into factions.  Douglas Woodruff, for example, tells of ’an industrious German, the father of a large family, who, with the help of willing child labour compiled a dictionary of Protestant sects.  His name is Grundler, and he has often kept his children in on a Sunday to help him arrange the cards, listing 2,639 different Christian denominations, the glorious fruit of the Protestant Reformation.’

And I read somewhere of a story that comedian Emo Philips used to tell:-