Get Out of the Church!

I have to admit this is convicting just to read, I can't imagine what it must have been like to hear from the mouth of Spurgeon himself. This is what the church today needs to hear!

I would say to you, members of this church, "Be holy!" Whatever you are, do seek to be holy. And if you will not be holy- if you have a mind to keep your sins- do us the favor to give up your profession. If you will have your sins, and go to hell, you can do it so much better outside the church than you can inside. I cannot see why you must need to do Christ the double ill-turn to be his enemy, and yet profess to be his friend. Get out of the church, you that are hypocrites! Oh! the great thing the Church needs is more holiness. The worst enemies of the Church are the hypocrites, the formalists the mere professors, the inconsistent walkers. It is shocking to think how persons dare to remain members of Christian churches, and even to enter the pulpit, when they are conscious that their private life is foul. Oh, how can they do it? How is it that their hearts have grown so hard? What! has the devil bewitched them? Has he turned them away from being men, and made them as devilish as himself, that they should dare to pray in public, and to sit at the sacramental table, and to administer ordinances, while their hands are foul, and their hearts unclean, and their lives are full of sin? I charge you, if there are any of you whose lives are not consistent, give up your profession, or else make your lives what they should be. May the eternal Spirit, who still winnows his Church, blow away the chaff, and leave only the good golden wheat upon the floor! And if you know yourselves to be living in any sin, may God help you to mourn over it, to loathe it, to go to Christ about it tonight; to take hold of him, to wash his feet with your tears, to repent unfeignedly, and then to begin anew in his strength, a life which shall be such as becomes the gospel. —C. H. Spurgeon (1834-1892)