J. C. Ryle Quotes
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Without holiness on earth we shall never be prepared to enjoy heaven. Heaven is a holy place. The Lord of heaven is a holy Being. The angels are holy creatures. Holiness is written on everything in heaven... How shall we ever be at home and happy in heaven if we die unholy?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Praying and sinning will never live together in the same heart. Prayer will consume sin, or sin will choke prayer.
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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.
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Let us be very careful that we never exalt any minister, or sermon, or book, or friend above the Word of God.
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A Christian is a walking sermon. They preach far more than a minister does, for they preach all week long.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Every fresh act of sin lessens fear and remorse, hardens our hearts, blunts the edge of our conscience, and increases our evil inclination.
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Prayer needs neither learning, wisdom or book knowledge to begin it. It needs nothing but heart and will.
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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.
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Look not to yourselves! You are by nature wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked. Look simply unto Jesus.
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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!
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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.
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Our Lord has many weak children in his family, many dull pupils in his school, many raw soldiers in his army, many lame sheep in his flock. Yet he bears with them all, and casts none away. Happy is that Christian who has learned to do likewise with his brethren.
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We are evidently no friends of Satan. Like the kings of this world, he wars not against his own subjects. The very fact that he assaults us should fill our minds with hope.
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The doctrine of Christ crucified is the strength of a Minister. I, for one, would not be without it for all the world.
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Let us awake to a sense of the perilous state of many professing Christians. 'Without holiness no man shall see the Lord'; without sanctification there is no salvation (Hebrews 12:14). Then what an enormous amount of so-called religion there is which is perfectly useless!
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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.