J. C. Ryle Quotes
-
There is something sadly wrong when it is more important to us whether others are a part of our denomination, rather than whether they repent of sin, believe on Christ and live holy lives.
-
Without the blessing of the Lord, your best endeavors will do no good. He has the hearts of all men in His hands, and except He touch the hearts of your children by His Spirit, you will weary yourself to no purpose. Water, therefore, the seed you sow on their minds with unceasing prayer.
-
Praying and sinning will never live together in the same heart. Prayer will consume sin, or sin will choke prayer.
-
Let us be very careful that we never exalt any minister, or sermon, or book, or friend above the Word of God.
-
What would you expect? Sin will not come to you saying, 'I am sin.' It would do little harm if it did. Sin always seems 'good, pleasant and desirable' at the time of arrival.
-
Doubting does not prove that a man has no faith, but only that his faith is small. And even when our faith is small, the Lord is ready to help us.
-
On the one hand stand salvation by free grace for Christ's sake; but on the other stands renewal of the carnal heart by the Spirit. We must be changed as well as forgiven; we must be renewed as well as redeemed.
-
The hand of the wicked can't stir one moment before God allows them to begin, and...one moment after God commands them to stop.
-
Humility and love are precisely the graces which the men of the world can understand, if they do not comprehend doctrines. They are the graces about which there is no mystery, and they are within reach of all classes... The poorest Christian can every day find occasion for practicing love and humility.
-
Every fresh act of sin lessens fear and remorse, hardens our hearts, blunts the edge of our conscience, and increases our evil inclination.
-
That preaching is sadly defective which dwells exclusively on the mercies of God and the joys of heaven, yet never sets forth the terrors of the Lord and the miseries of hell.
-
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.
-
Look not to yourselves! You are by nature wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked. Look simply unto Jesus.
-
Inability to distinguish doctrine is spreading far and wide, and so long as the preacher is "clever" and "earnest," hundreds seem to think it must be all right, and call you dreadfully "narrow and uncharitable" if you hint that he is unsound!
-
Make it a part of every day's business to read and meditate on some portion of God's Word. Private means of grace are just as needful every day for our souls as food and clothing are for our bodies.
-
Be very sure of this,-people never reject the Bible because they cannot understand it. They understand it only too well; they understand that it condemns their own behavior; they understand that it witnesses against their own sins, and summons them to judgment.
-
There is but one fountain of comfort for a man drawing near to his end, and that is the Bible. ...All comfort from any other source is a house built upon sand.
-
The man who has nothing more than a kind of Sunday religion -- whose Christianity is like his Sunday clothes put on once a week, and then laid aside -- such a man cannot, of course, be expected to care about growth in grace.
-
Christ's death is the Christian's life. Christ's cross is the Christian's title to heaven. Christ "lifted up" and put to shame on Calvary is the ladder by which Christians "enter into the holiest," and are at length landed in glory.
-
The doctrine of Christ crucified is the strength of a Minister. I, for one, would not be without it for all the world.
-
Holiness is the habit of being of one mind with God, according as we find His mind described in Scripture. It is the habit of agreeing in God's judgment, hating what He hates, loving what He loves, and measuring everything in this world by the standard of His Word.
-
Conversion is not putting a man in an armchair and taking him easily to heaven. It is the beginning of a mighty conflict, in which it costs much to win the victory.
-
God has linked holiness and happiness; and what God has joined together we must not think to put asunder.
-
What is the best safeguard against false doctrine? The Bible regularly read, regularly prayed over, regularly studied.