Today I’d like to introduce you to one of my all-time favorite authors: J.C. Ryle. Ryle was a bishop for the Church of England, writing and ministering in the latter half of the 1800’s. Even though he lived and wrote almost 200 years ago, his books are still as popular today as ever. You don’t have to be a scholar or even a pastor to enjoy and benefit from Ryle. His style remains accessible to normal folks today (more on that below).
Ryle’s skill in short, concise writing was unmatched. In fact, I’ve never read anyone who rivals him in this area. He is perhaps the greatest Christian tract/booklet writer in the history of the church. He never wasted words. He never used ten words when four would do. And he kept his vocabulary simple. This is why, after hundreds of years, his books are still so accessible to normal folks. Normal, everyday believers continue to find enjoyment and great spiritual help in the writings of J.C. Ryle today. Three of his short booklets that have impacted me greatly are A Call to Prayer, Simplicity in Preaching, and Sickness (a book on how to think biblically about illness). There is probably no book I have given out more copies of in my ministry than A Call to Prayer, and everyone who reads it says it is extremely powerful. If you’ve never read Ryle, this is a perfect place to start.
Ryle also produced a number of shorter books that are too long to be considered booklets, but also much shorter than a typical book. I have taken over a dozen young men through Thoughts For Young Men. In fact, this may be my favorite of all of Ryle’s books. It is densely packed with practical and wise insights all men need to hear and heed. Any man at any age would benefit from this one. Similarly, Happiness and How Do You Read the Bible? are both excellent and insightful.
Ryle’s most well-known work is probably Holiness, a wonderful and power-packed look at sin and the fight for sanctification in the life of the believer, which comes in at about 140 pages depending on the edition (I recommend getting an edition without the added sermons that are included with some later editions). I have a wealth of highlights and quotes saved from Holiness, which I return to often in my personal life and my ministry.
Ryle never shied away from confronting and convicting the reader with hard truths. He did not write to make people feel good about themselves. He never sought to give itching ears what they wanted to hear. He spoke simply and directly. J.I. Packer, commenting on Ryle’s writing style, noted “its easy logical flow, its total lack of sentimentality, and its resolve to call a spade a spade.”** Ryle wrote to motivate his readers to seek the Lord with all their hearts and to go to war against their sin.
The Lord blessed J.C. Ryle with a razor-sharp mind which gave him the ability to pull fresh and penetrating insights from the Bible. But he also had a keen understanding of the human heart. He could open your eyes to things you’d never considered, both in the world outside of you, and the one inside of you. The combination of those two abilities is rare and Ryle had them both in abundance. Therefore, as so many have attested over the years, reading Ryle is never boring.
Finally, we likely would never have known or heard of J.C. Ryle if it had not been for the most difficult and humbling event in his life — the sudden, unexpected, and complete bankruptcy of his upper-class family in 1841. Ryle was 25 years old at the time and had only been a believer for a few years. It was his ambition to become a lawyer or take over his father’s banking business, and to become a member of parliament on top of it all, but this event essentially eliminated those possibilities. As the eldest son in the family, he was set to inherit a significant fortune as well as an upper-class lifestyle. Instead, he spent years poor and rejected by his former friends and all others in respectable society. He wrote, “In short if I had not been a Christian at this time, I do not know if I should not have committed suicide.”**
It was only after this that J.C. Ryle entered the ministry, having full confidence that the Lord had led him there. The bankruptcy caused him and his family a great deal of suffering, but ultimately we should all be thankful for this particular providence of God in his life, without which we would not have the lasting gift of his writings. “If my father’s affairs had prospered, and I had never been ruined … I should never have been a clergyman, never have preached a sermon, written a tract, or a book.”**
Ryle wrote a great number of books beyond the ones mentioned in this article. But if you’re looking for a good place to start, I would recommend choosing one of the volumes above.
Footnotes
** Faitfulness & Holiness: the Witness of J.C. Ryle, Crossway, p. 19
** Prepared to Stand Alone by Iain Murray, p. 71
** Ibid. p. 81
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