John Charles Ryle (10 May 1816 – 10 June 1900) was an English Evangelical Anglican bishop. He was the first Anglican bishop of Liverpool.
People will never set their faces decidedly towards heaven, and live like pilgrims, until they really feel that they are in danger of hell.
The key to understanding the Bible is Jesus Christ.
Just as the first sign of life in an infant when born into the world is the act of breathing, so the first act of men and women when they are born again is praying.
The last day will prove that some of the holiest men that ever lived are hardly known.
If we would have good ministers, we must remember our Lord’s example, and pray for them. Their work is heavy. Their responsibility is enormous. Their strength is small. Let us see that we support them, and hold up their hands by our prayers.
Let it be a settled principle in our minds, in reading the Bible, that Christ is the central sun of the whole book. So long as we keep Him in view, we shall never greatly err in our search for spiritual knowledge. Once losing sight of Christ, we shall find the whole Bible dark and full of difficulty.
What could an unsanctified man do in Heaven, if by any chance he got there? Let that question be fairly looked in the face and fairly answered. No man can possibly be happy in a place where he is not in his element and where all around him is not congenial to his tastes, habits and character.
Happiness does not depend on outward circumstances, but on the state of the heart.
If the Bible is not the Word of God and inspired, the whole of Christendom for 1800 years has been under an immense delusion; half the human race has been cheated and deceived, and churches are monuments of folly. If the Bible is the Word of God and inspired, all who refuse to believe it are in fearful danger; they are living on the brink of eternal misery. No man, in his sober senses, can fail to see that the whole subject demands most serious attention.
Prayer is the very life-breath of true Christianity.
If you do not love Christ, let me plainly tell you what is the reason: You have no sense of debt to Him.
There is no fickleness about Jesus: those whom He loves, He loves to the end.
When you cannot answer a skeptic, be content to wait for more light; but never forsake a great principle.
We are all naturally self-righteous. It is the family disease of all the children of Adam.
A saved soul has many sorrows. They have their share of bereavements, deaths, disappointments , crosses. What shall enable a believer to bear all this? Nothing but the consolation there is in Christ.
Trials are intended to make us think, to wean us from the world, to send us to the Bible, to drive us to our knees.
I believe it to be clear evidence of the Spirit’s presence when the Word of God is really precious to a person’s soul.
Let it be a settled principle. . . that men's salvation, if saved, is wholly of God; and that man's ruin, if lost, is wholly of himself.
There are very few errors and false doctrines of which the beginning may not be traced up to unsound views about the corruption of human nature. Wrong views of the disease will always bring with them wrong views of the remedy. Wrong views of the corruption of human nature will always carry with them wrong views of the grand antidote and cure of that corruption.
O Christian, look up and take comfort. Jesus has prepared a place for you, and those who follow Him shall never perish, neither shall anyone pluck them out of His hands.