John Charles Ryle (10 May 1816 – 10 June 1900) was an English Evangelical Anglican bishop. He was the first Anglican bishop of Liverpool.
If God has given His Son to die for us, let us beware of doubting His kindness and love in any painful providence of our daily life.
Christmas is a season which almost all Christians observe in one way or another. Some keep it as a religious season. Some keep it as a holiday. But all over the world, wherever there are Christians, in one way or another Christmas is kept.
Let your Christianity be so unmistakable, your eye so single, your heart so whole, your walk so straightforward, that all who see you may have no doubt whose you are, and whom you serve.
I fear we are in danger of forgetting that to HAVE the Bible is one thing, and to READ it quite another.
If we would know whether our faith is genuine, we do well to ask ourselves how we are living.
Sicknesses, losses, crosses, anxieties and disappointments seem absolutely needful to keep us humble, watchful and spiritual-minde d. They are as needful as the pruning knife to the vine and the refiner’s furnace to the gold.
Do we profess to love Christ? Then let us show it by our lives.
The true cure for self-righteousness is self-knowledge.
Parents, do you wish to see your children happy? Take care, then, that you train them to obey when they are spoken to, -to do as they are bid. . . . Teach them to obey while young, or else they will be fretting against God all their lives long, and wear themselves out with the vain idea of being independent of His control.
The last day will prove that some of the holiest men that ever lived are hardly known.
Our prayers may be weak, stammering, and poor in our eyes. But if they come from a right heart, God understands them. Such prayers are His delight.
What is the best safeguard against false doctrine? The Bible regularly read, regularly prayed over, regularly studied.
There must not only be good preaching, but good hearing.
All the simplicity in the world can do no good, unless you preach the simple gospel of Jesus Christ so fully and clearly that everybody can understand it. If 'Christ crucified' has not His rightful place in your sermons, and sin is not exposed as it should be, and your people are not plainly told what they ought to believe, and be, and do - your preaching is of no use!
All converted people should labor to adorn the doctrine they profess by humility. If they can do nothing else, they can strive to be humble.
Unity without the gospel is a worthless unity; it is the very unity of hell.
What is the cause of most backslidings? I believe, as a general rule, one of the chief causes is neglect of private prayer.
A zealous man feels that like a lamp he is made to burn; and if consumed in burning, he has but done the work for which God appointed him. Such a one will always find a sphere for his zeal. If he cannot preach and work and give money, he will cry and sigh and pray.
No doubt a man may be saved, like the penitent thief, without having received the Lord's Supper. It is not a matter of absolute and indispensable necessity, like repentance, faith, and conversion. But it is impossible to say that any professing Christian is in a safe, healthy, or satisfactory condition of soul, who habitually refuses to obey Christ and attend the Lord's Table.
We must cast away everything which hinders us upon our road towards heaven – the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye and the pride of life; the love of riches, pleasures and honors, the spirit of lukewarmness and carelessness and indifference about the things of God – all must be rooted out and forsaken if we are anxious for the prize. We must mortify the deeds of the body, we must crucify our affections for this world.