Top 381 Quotes & Sayings by J. C. Ryle - Page 7

Surely if there be any habit which your own hand and eye should help in forming, it is the habit of prayer.

Am I honest? Am I sincere? Do I really desire first the praise of God?

A deep sense of sin, a humble willingness to be saved in God's way, a teachable readiness to give up our own prejudices when a more excellent way is shown, these are the principal things. These things the two disciples possessed, and therefore our Lord "went with them" and guided them into all truth.

Let us only take heed that this office of Christ is not set before us in vain. It will profit us nothing at the last day that Jesus was a Shepherd, if during our lifetime, we never heard His voice and followed Him. If we love life, let us join His flock without delay.

For my own part, I believe that in dealing with skeptics, and unbelievers, and enemies of the Bible, Christians are too apt to stand only on the defensive. They are too often content with answering this or that little objection, or discussing this or that little difficulty, which is picked out of Scripture and thrown in their teeth. I believe we ought to act on the aggressive far more than we do, and to press home on the adversaries of [Biblical] inspiration the enormous difficulties of their own position.

The cross is the foundation of the Bible: If you have not yet found out that Christ crucified is the foundation of the whole volume, you have hitherto read your Bible to very little profit. Your religion is a heaven without a sun, an arch without a keystone, a compass without a needle, a clock without a spring or weights, a lamp without oil. It will not comfort you; it will not deliver your soul from hell.

Many, I fear, would like glory, who have no wish for grace. They would [want to] have the wages, but not the work; the harvest, but not the labor; the reaping, but not the sowing; the reward, but not the battle. But it may not be.

If you would train your children rightly, train them in the way they should go and not in the way they would.

Assurance of hope is more than life, it is health, strength, power, vigor, activity, energy, manliness, beauty.

When a man’s heart is cold and unconcerned about religion – when his hands are never employed in doing God’s work – when his feet are not familiar with God’s ways – when his tongue is seldom or never used in prayer and praise – when his eyes are blind to the beauty of the kingdom of heaven – when his mind is full of the world, and has no room for spiritual things – when these marks are to be found in a man the word of the Bible is the right word to use about him, and that word is, ‘Dead.’

Sin rarely seems sin at first beginnings.

A good conscience will be found a pleasant visitor at our bedside in a dying hour.

It is easy to criticize and find fault with the conduct of kings, and write furious articles against them in newspapers, or make violent speeches about them on platforms. Any fool can rip and rend a costly garment, but not every man can cut out and make one. To expect perfection in kings, prime ministers, or rulers of any king, is senseless and unreasonable. We would exhibit more wisdom if we prayed for them more, and criticized less.

Those who confine God's love exclusively to the elect appear to me to take a narrow and contracted view of God's character and attributes....I have long come to the conclusion that men may be more systematic in their statements than the Bible, and may be led into grave error by idolatrous veneration of a system

The best of men are only men at their very best. Patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, - martyrs, fathers, reformers, puritans, - all are sinners, who need a Savior: holy, useful, honorable in their place - but sinners after all.

Follow Christ for His own sake, if you follow Him at all.

We corrupt the Word of God most dangerously, when we throw any doubt on the plenary inspiration of any part of Holy Scripture.

The doctrine of Christ crucified is the strength of a Minister. I, for one, would not be without it for all the world.

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.

Nothing so hardens the heart of man as a barren familiarity with sacred things.

Growth in grace is one way to be happy in our religion. God has wisely linked together our comfort and our increase in holiness.