WITHOUT A TRACE OF ENTHUSIASM
I was reading George Cary’s sermon at The United Methodist General Conference, May 10, 2000 and want to share a portion with you: “As you know, the Methodists were determined to bring joy and life to the church; the institutional church seemed determined to keep them out. Yet there’s a church near Cambridge in England which has a very extraordinary plaque inside the church. It commemorates an incumbent at the time of the Wesley brothers, and the plaque reads like this: ‘Erected to the memory of the Reverend–and then tells his name–who served as vicar among us for 30 years, without the slightest trace of enthusiasm.’ Now that’s not the kind of memorial I’d like to leave behind me. So you ask the question: What does it mean, he worked for 30 years without the slightest trace of enthusiasm? Well, you see, the ‘enthusiasts’ were the Methodists. And he kept them out of his parish. Alas! Religion has…
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