Snapshots Of Church History
- Contending for the Faith: Augustine of Hippo (354-430) (1)
- Who is Jesus? (2)
- Julian of Norwich (3)
- Rebecca Protten (5)
- Valiant For Truth (6)
J C Ryle (1816-1900)
John Charles Ryle was born in Macclesfield into an upper middle-class family. His father had inherited the equivalent of £100,000,000 from banking and the silk trade whilst still in his twenties. The family attended church out of a sense of duty and endured such lifeless sermons that Ryle later said that you could sleep under them as easily as in your own armchairs. At the age of 12, John Charles was sent to Eton and 6 years later, proceeded to Christchurch, Oxford, where he excelled in cricket and achieved a First Class in Classics.
Conversion
During his years at Oxford, God worked upon his careless heart. Whilst on a shooting party, he swore and was reprimanded by a Christian friend which awoke a sense of the seriousness of the Christian faith. With his sister, he visited a new church back home and heard a gospel sermon for the first time, but his heart was unmoved and he was ridiculed by his family for going there. In 1837, just before his final exams, a chest infection confined John Charles to bed. He read the Bible and prayed sincerely for the first time in his life. Later that year, aged about 21, Ryle was soundly converted after hearing the passage:
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your doing, it is the gift of God (Eph. 2:8).
He later commented:
Nothing to this day appeared to me so clear and distinct as my own sinfulness, Christ’s preciousness, the value of the Bible, the absolute necessity of coming out of the world, the need of being born again, and the enormous folly of the whole doctrine of baptismal regeneration.
Crisis
Ryle left Oxford for Lincoln’s Inn and a legal and possibly future political career, but after 18 months became unwell, returned to the family home and joined the family banking business. He led prayers for the servants, but no one else came to them. Then disaster struck, and the bank went bankrupt. The family had to sell almost everything and moved to Angleseyville on the Solent, living off his mother’s private income.
The ministry
With banking and politics eliminated, the family reluctantly accepted the church was Ryle’s only option. He wrote, ‘I became a clergyman because I felt shut up to do it, and saw no other course of life open to me.’ He became curate of St Katherine’s, Exbury, taking care to preach, distribute tracts and provide rudimentary medical care for the poor sick people. However, overwork and a detrimental ethos proved too much and Ryle resigned in 1843, subsequently becoming curate at Winchester where he was soon preaching to a packed church of 600 people.
Preaching and writing
In 1844, Ryle became Rector of St Mary, Helmingham in Suffolk. Here he realised that his written sermons were too florid and above the heads of a rural congregation. He adopted a more lively, plain style with shorter punchy sentences. Ryle now preached earnestly without notes, with a wonderful power of illustration. His often repeated phrase when establishing a point of doctrine was ‘Hear what the Scripture says …’. The Bible was his only rule in matters of faith and doctrine and we could do well to copy him.
It was in Helmingham that Ryle built up an extensive library, wrote about 80 of his 200 tracts and began his devotional studies on the Gospels.
Wielding the sword of truth
Ryle opposed the Oxford Movement or Tractarians who were seeking to return the established church to Anglo-Catholicism, with the re-introduction of doctrines, vestments and numerous practices derived from Roman Catholicism into worship. He accordingly opposed the concept of baptismal regeneration. He also had to resist the liberal theology that spread from Europe and replaced the Genesis account of creation with Darwinian evolution.
He was disturbed by worldliness in the church and the shallow concept of holiness and sanctification which advocated ‘let go and let God’, rather than ‘fight the good fight of faith’ and ‘count the cost.’ His writings on this subject have been published as Holiness. Lloyd-Jones said that Ryle’s ‘books are a distillation of true Puritan theology presented in a highly readable and modern form.’
Final innings
John Charles became vicar of Stradbroke, Suffolk in 1861, remaining there until 1880 when he was appointed the first Bishop of Liverpool. He appointed fifty Scripture readers who took services in mission rooms, organised Sunday schools and visited the sick. In his diocese, he built forty-two churches and established fifty new mission halls. After a stroke, he retired and died soon afterward, buried with a Bible in his hands. His successor, Bishop Francis Chavasse, described him as ‘that man of granite with the heart of a child.’ Charles Spurgeon described him as ’an evangelical champion – one of the bravest and best of men.’
Ryle’s legacy for today
I owe a lot to the writings of John Charles Ryle. His book Five English Reformers led me to an experience of true repentance, and his Holiness formed in me a solid concept of true biblical sanctification. His writings still resonate with urgency, are relevant for today and seem not at all dated.
Here are a few examples taken from Holiness.
On sin
A Scriptural view of sin is one of the best antidotes to that vague, dim, misty, hazy kind of theology that is so painfully current in the present age. People will never set their faces decidedly towards heaven, and live like pilgrims, until they really feel that they are in danger of hell. Without thorough conviction of sin, men may seem to come to Jesus and follow Him for a season, but they will soon fall away and return to the world.
On sanctification
Let us all 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 (Heb. 12:14). Then what an enormous amount of so-called religion there is which is perfectly useless. If we would be sanctified, our course is clear and plain – we must begin with Christ. We must go to Him as sinners, with no plea but that of utter need, and cast our souls on Him by faith, for peace and reconciliation with God.
On counting the cost
Arise and play the man. Say to yourself, ‘Whatever it may cost, I will at any rate, strive to enter in at the strait gate.’ Look at the cross of Christ and take fresh courage. It may cost much to be a Christian, but you may be sure it pays.
