TREAT YOURSELF AS YOU HAVE OTHERS.
By Spurgeon
TREAT yourselves, my dear friends, as you have been accustomed to treat others. We get another man's character and tie it up to the halberds, and out with our great whip, and begin to lay on with all our force, and after the flogging we wash the poor creature with a kind of briny pretence of excusing his sins. After that again we throw him back upon the bed of spikes, on our own supposition that he is a great deal worse than we have made him out to be. Ah, just serve thyself so. Tie thyself to the halberds, man, and lay on the whip. Do not spare him. When you have got yourself tied up, strike hard, sir; it is a great rascal you are whipping. Now, then, a heavy blow! Kill him if you can. The sooner he is dead the better; for when he is once killed, as to all idea of righteousness in himself, then he will begin to lead a new life and be a new creature in Christ Jesus. Make him feel that the leprosy lies deep within. Give him no rest. Treat him as cruelly as he could treat another. 'Twould be only his deserts. But who is this that I am telling you to treat so? Yourself, my hearer, yourself. Be as severe as you can, but let the culprit be yourself. Put on the wig, and sit upon the judgment-seat. Read the King's commission. There is such a commission for you to be judge. It says, Judge thyself—though it says judge not others. Put on, I say, your robes; sit up there lord chief justice of the Isle of Man, and then bring up the culprit. Make him stand at the bar. Accuse him; plead against him; condemn him. Say, "take him away, jailor." Find out the hardest punishment you can discover in the statute book, and believe that he deserves it all. Be as severe as ever you can on yourself, even to the putting on the black cap, and reading the sentence of death. When you have done this, you will be in a hopeful way for life, for he that condemns himself God absolves. He that stands self-convicted may look to Christ hanging on the cross, and see himself hanging there, and see his sins forever put away by the sacrifice of Jesus on the tree.—Spurgeon.