Reformation, Personal—Required – Charles Spurgeon

IT highly gratifies some people when they can find a fault in some highly-respected brother; they just pull him to pieces with about the same zest that might be displayed by a jackdaw or an ape. That is their forte, the strength of their genius—detraction—pulling to pieces what they could not put together, and attempting to raise themselves by lowering others. But notice, the apostle says, “Let us cleanse ourselves.” Oh, that we would look at home! Oh, that we did more indoor work in this department! Yes, it is our business to tell our brother of his faults, certainly. This ought we to have done, but certainly we ought not to have left the other undone, for that is the first business. “Let us cleanse ourselves.” It is very well to drag the church of God up to the altar, like some bleeding victim, and there to stab her with the sharpest knife of our criticism, and to say of the modern church that she is not this, and she is not that. One might ask, how far do I help to make her what she is? If she be degenerate, how far is that degeneracy consequent upon my having fallen from the high standing which I ought to have occupied? We shall all have contributed our quota to the reform of the church when we are reformed ourselves. There can be no better way of promoting general holiness than by increasing in personal holiness. “Let us cleanse ourselves.”