Category Archives: J. C. Ryle

Don’t Walk around Looking Like You Were Weaned on Sour Pickles

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True religion was never meant to make [people] melancholy. On the contrary, it was intended to increase real joy and happiness among [people]. . . . The Christian who withdraws entirely from the society of his fellow men, and walks the earth with a face as melancholy as if he was always attending a funeral, does injury to the cause of the gospel. A cheerful, kindly spirit is a great recommendation to a believer. . . . A merry heart, and a readiness to take part in all innocent mirth, are gifts of inestimable value. They go far to soften prejudices, to take up stumbling-blocks out of the way, and to make way for Christ and the gospel.

J. C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on John Vol. 1 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2012), 64.

Conflictless Christianity

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The saddest symptom about many so-called Christians is the utter absence of anything like conflict and fight against spiritual apathy in their Christianity. They eat, they drink, they dress, they work, they amuse themselves, they get money, they spend money, they go through a brief round of formal religious services once or twice every week. But of the great spiritual warfare – its watchings and strugglings, its agonies and anxieties, its battles and contests – of all things they appear to know nothing at all. Let us take care that this case is not our own.

J. C. Ryle (1816-1900)

How Could We Ever Be Sure about Anything?

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We need not wonder that so much importance is attached to our Lord’s resurrection. It is the seal and memorial stone of the great work of redemption, which He came to do. It is the crowning proof that He has paid the debt He undertook to pay on our behalf, won the battle He fought to deliver us from hell, and is accepted as our guarantee and our substitute by our Father in heaven.

Had He never come forth from the prison of the grave, how could we ever have been sure that our ransom had been fully paid (1 Corinthians 15:17)? Had He never risen from His conflict with the last enemy, how could we have felt confident that He has overcome the power of death from the devil (Hebrews 2:14)? But thanks be unto God, we are not left in doubt. The Lord Jesus really rose again for our justification.

J. C. Ryle (1816-1900)

The Essential Element to Church Health and Success

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A preaching ministry is absolutely essential to the health and prosperity of a visible church. The pulpit is the place where the chief victories of the Gospel have always been won, and no Church has ever done much for the advancement of true religion in which the pulpit has been neglected. Would we know whether a minister is a truly apostolical man? If he is, he will give the best of his attention to his sermons. He will labor and pray to make his preaching effective, and he will tell his congregation that he looks to preaching for the chief results on souls. The minister who exalts the sacraments, or forms of the Church, above preaching, may be a zealous, earnest, conscientious, and respectable minister; but his zeal is not according to knowledge. He is not a follower of the apostles.

J. C. Ryle (1816-1900)

Learning Lessons in Days of Darkness Not To Be Learned in the Sunshine

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If we know anything of growth in grace, and desire to know more, let us not be surprised if we have to go through much trial and affliction in this world…. It is a striking saying of our Lord, “Every branch in Me that beareth fruit [My Father] purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit” (John 15.2). It is a melancholy fact, that constant temporal prosperity, as a general rule, is injurious to a believer’s soul. We cannot stand it. Sickness and losses and crosses and anxieties and disappointments seem absolutely needful as the pruning-knife to the vine, and the refiner’s furnace to the gold. They are not pleasant to flesh and blood. We do not like them, and often do not see their meaning. “No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness” (Heb. 12.11). We shall find that all worked for our good when we reach heaven…. When days of darkness come upon us, let us not count it a strange thing. Rather, let us remember that lessons are learned on such days, which would never have been learned in sunshine.

J. C. Ryle, Holiness (Carlisle, PA: EP Books, 2011), 94.