J. C. Ryle Quotes on Prayer, the Cross, Faith and Holiness
J. C. Ryle wrote for ordinary people. He was a country minister in Suffolk for more than thirty-five years and then the first Bishop of Liverpool, and his tracts were read by millions. His style is short, direct and memorable. He liked to pack a whole truth into one sentence and then press it on the reader's conscience.
Plenty of Ryle quotes float around online without a source, and a few aren't his. Every quotation below is copied exactly from his books in TheWay Library, with the book and chapter it comes from, so you can read each one in its place. For his life story, see who was J. C. Ryle. For a guide to all his books, see J. C. Ryle books.
On prayer
Ryle's paper on prayer in Practical Religion is one of the most read things he wrote. He treated private prayer as the plainest test of a living faith.
Prayer is the most important subject in practical religion.
Practical Religion, Prayer
In short, to be prayerless is to be without God, — without Christ, — without grace, — without hope, — and without heaven.
Practical Religion, Prayer
I believe the difference, in nineteen cases out of twenty, arises from different habits about private prayer.
Practical Religion, Prayer
Prayer is the spiritual pulse: by this the spiritual health may always be tested.
Practical Religion, Prayer
Prayer is the simplest act in all religion.
Practical Religion, Prayer
If you are to dwell with God in heaven, your heart must talk with God upon earth by prayer.
The Priest, the Puritan, and the Preacher, I Have Somewhat to Say unto Thee
On the Bible
The next chapter of the same book turns to Bible reading. Ryle believed that knowing the Scriptures was the one kind of knowledge no one can do without.
Next to praying there is nothing so important in practical religion as Bible-reading.
Practical Religion, Bible-Reading
But all this time I fear we are in danger of forgetting, that to have the Bible is one thing, and to read it quite another.
Practical Religion, Bible-Reading
A man may get to heaven without money, learning, health, or friends, — but without Bible knowledge he will never get there at all.
Practical Religion, Bible-Reading
On Christ and the cross
Ryle kept Christ crucified at the center of everything he wrote. His tract The Cross puts it most strongly.
Depend upon it, the cross of Christ, — the death of Christ on the cross to make atonement for sinners, — is the centre truth in the whole Bible.
The Cross, The Cross
Work for God and Christ with heart and soul and mind and strength, but never dream for a second of placing confidence in any work of your own.
The Cross, The Cross
Interpose anything between man and Christ, and man will neglect Christ for the thing interposed!
Knots Untied, Evangelical Religion
There never was but one road to heaven: Jesus Christ was the way, the truth and the life yesterday as well as to-day.
The Christian Race and Other Sermons, The Unchanging Christ
Happy is that person whose chief friend is Christ!
Practical Religion, The Best Friend
There is rest in Christ, rest of conscience, and rest of heart, rest built on pardon of all sin, rest flowing from peace with God.
Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: Matthew, Matthew 11
On sin and repentance
He never softened the Bible's words about sin, because he believed you can't value the cure until you see the disease.
To know "our sins" is the first letter in the alphabet of saving religion.
Old Paths, Our Sins!
Sin is a hard master, and the servants of sin always find it out, sooner or later, to their cost.
Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: Luke, Vol. 2, Luke 15
There is no degree of sin into which the greatest saint may not run, if he is not held up by the grace of God, and if he does not watch and pray.
Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: Mark, Mark 14
Repentance is a thorough change of man's natural heart upon the subject of sin.
Old Paths, Repentance
On faith and the new birth
Ryle taught that we are saved by faith alone, and that this faith is a real act of the whole person, not a mere opinion.
Faith is the hand that lays hold on Christ.
Old Paths, Our Sins!
True faith in Christ, though it be but a day old, justifies a man before God as completely as the faith of him who has followed Christ for fifty years.
Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: Matthew, Matthew 20
There is a faith which devils have, and a faith which is the gift of God.
Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: John, Vol. 1, John 2
He does not regard the quantity of faith, but the quality, — He does not measure its degree, but its truth.
Startling Questions, Have You Assurance?
Men are said to be born poets and painters, — but men are never born sons of God.
Startling Questions, Are You an Heir?
On real religion and holiness
Faith alone saves, but Ryle insisted it never stays alone. These are some of his sharpest lines.
If we profess to have any religion at all, let us take care that it is real.
Practical Religion, Reality
We must be holy, because this is the only sound evidence that we have a saving faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.
Living or Dead?, Are You Holy?
The man who boasts of having an interest in Christ, while he does not follow Christ in his life, is a miserable self-deceiver, and is ruining his own soul.
Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: Mark, Mark 10
It is not enough to wear Christ's livery; we must also fight Christ's battle.
Startling Questions, Where Art Thou?
Our entrance into heaven will be entirely by grace, and not of works; but heaven itself would be no heaven to us if we entered it with an unsanctified character.
Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: John, Vol. 3, John 17
On zeal
His paper on zeal describes the Christian who lives for one thing.
A zealous man in religion is pre-eminently a man of one thing.
Practical Religion, Zeal
He feels that, like a lamp, he is made to burn; and if consumed in burning, he has but done the work for which God appointed him.
Practical Religion, Zeal
True zeal will speak truth boldly, like Athanasius, against the world, and not care who is offended; but true zeal will endeavor in all its speaking, to speak the truth in love.
The Priest, the Puritan, and the Preacher, Be Zealous
On preachers and revival
Ryle loved the preachers of the eighteenth-century revival, and he wrote about them to stir up his own generation.
When God takes a work in hand, nothing can stop it.
The Christian Leaders of the Last Century, The Agency by Which Christianity Was Revived in England in the Middle of the Eighteenth Century
He was perpetually telling you about your sins, your heart, and Jesus Christ, in the way that the Bible speaks of them.
A Sketch of the Life and Labors of George Whitefield
Let me, then, charge all the clergy whom I am about to leave behind me never to neglect their preaching.
Principles for Churchmen, Farewell Letter to the Diocese of Liverpool
On children
He preached to children too, simply and warmly. These come from The Two Bears.
Children, if you want to go to heaven, you must ask Jesus Christ to let you in.
The Two Bears, and Other Sermons for Children, No More Crying!
Read Ryle in full
These lines are better in their setting, where Ryle builds to them step by step. Start with Practical Religion and its chapters on prayer and Bible reading, then read Old Paths. All twenty-three of his books in the library are on the J. C. Ryle author page.