In the last half-century, the books of a number of ministers, past and present, have had a significant influence on the thinking and the lives of Christians throughout the western world. Among the subjects of such volumes are Jonathan Edwards, Charles H Spurgeon, D Martyn Lloyd-Jones, John Murray, and John Charles Ryle. We are indebted to Iain Murray for either writing biographies of all these men, or giving us substantial accounts of their witness. This biography of Bishop Ryle is his latest contribution to what is now an impressive list of biographical and historical accounts, all published by the Banner of Truth Trust.
One of the first Christian books the reviewer possessed in the early 1960s was Ryle’s book on Holiness. It acted as a corrective to the Keswick teaching that was heartily approved of in the circles in which he was moving at the time. In his introduction to that 1956 edition, of Ryle’s book, published by James Clarke & Co, Dr Lloyd-Jones observes with regard to the state of Evangelicalism and of Christian publishing at that time: “One of the most encouraging and hopeful signs I have observed for many a long day in Evangelical circles has been the renewed and increasing interest in the writings of Bishop J C Ryle. In his day he was famous, and outstanding and beloved as a champion and exponent of the Evangelical and Reformed faith. For some reason or other, however, his name and his works are not familiar to modern Evangelicals. His books are, I believe, all out of print in this country and very difficult to obtain second-hand. The differing fates suffered in this respect by Bishop Ryle and his near contemporary, Bishop Moule, have always been to me a matter of great interest. But Bishop Ryle is being rediscovered and there is a new call for the republication of his works.”^2^
In the early sixties no one had written a full-scale biography of Ryle. All that was available then were two booklets which described his life and witness. In the intervening years a significant change has taken place with the publication of several detailed accounts.^3^ This volume, whilst making a significant original contribution, also harnesses, most helpfully, the work of others who have written in the last 40 years on the first Bishop of Liverpool.
Iain Murray begins his account with Ryle’s confession: “If I had died before I was twenty-one, if there is such a thing as being lost for ever in hell, which I do not doubt, I certainly should have been lost for ever” (p xi). Ryle was born in Macclesfield, Cheshire, in 1816. He was the eldest son of John Ryle, the wealthy owner of a private bank and Member of Parliament for Macclesfield. He had a privileged childhood and was educated first at Eton and then at Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated with first-class honours.
He was converted in 1837, during his time at University; the main influence being the reading of Ephesians 2, which was the portion appointed by the Lectionary in the Book of Common Prayer for June 25. Regarding the date of his conversion, Mr Murray observes, “Neither in his own experience, nor that of anyone else, did Ryle think it important to date conversion to a particular day. As he would later preach, in the recognition of true conversion it is not the date that matters but its nature and effects” (p 23).
The Evangelical revival of the previous century had started a recovery of Evangelical Christianity in the Established Church: “At the beginning of the century (1800) no group approached the Evangelicals in what they were accomplishing both at home and abroad” (p 32). Matters were, however, to take a dramatic turn; Ryle’s conversion occurred at the same time as the Tractarian,^4^ or Anglo-Catholic, movement was beginning to emerge. During all the time Ryle was at Oxford, the vicar of the University church of St Mary’s was John Henry Newman, who resigned his charge in 1843 and two years later was received into the Roman Catholic Church. Ryle’s examiner at Oxford also became a Romanist; all this had a massive influence on him, and once he was a minister he would play a central role, as one of the leaders of the Evangelical party, in opposing Anglo-Catholic doctrine. Indeed Iain Murray notes in his defence of a lengthy digression from the details of Ryle’s life in order to detail the rise of Tractarianism: “Without this context, a life of Ryle would be like a life of the Duke of Wellington without the Napoleonic Wars” (p 38).
Conversion for Ryle brought a measure of loneliness, due to the breach it made in the family circle. His tastes had changed, and he no longer wanted to be involved in the worldliness associated with a wealthy Cheshire family’s lifestyle. Then, in June 1841, just four years after his conversion, a decisive event took place in Ryle’s life, when his father’s bank collapsed. The family estates and income were swept away and the household broken up. Ryle, who had intended to go into Parliament, decided instead to enter the Anglican ministry. He was later to write, “I became a clergyman because I felt shut up to it, and saw no other course of life open to me” (p 56).
His first charge was at Exbury in Hampshire. This was followed by a short ministry in Winchester, before he was offered the rectorship of Helmingham in Suffolk, where he ministered for 17 years. After this came a 19-year pastorate in another Suffolk parish, as the vicar of All Saints in Stradbroke. The years at Helmingham and Stradbroke, both small country parishes, saw Ryle rise to prominence within the Evangelical school. Over 6 foot 3 inches tall, his commanding presence, combined with plain and clear oratory, made him a popular preacher, while regular visits to London for his wife’s health gave him easy access to the capital’s pulpits.
The sixth chapter of Iain Murray’s biography is entitled “Rural Suffolk: Stepping-Stone to the World”. It was during his Suffolk days that Ryle began to write tracts. Though some of these were just a few pages long and were meant for wide distribution, having a direct evangelistic objective, others were much more extensive; his tract Do you Pray? extends to 45 pages whilst one on Regeneration ran to 104 pages. It was as an author of tracts that Ryle made his greatest impact during his Suffolk ministry, writing some 200 titles which sold 12 million copies during his lifetime. Whether devotional, evangelistic or polemical, Ryle’s tracts were models of forceful argument and clear prose. Apart from his seven volumes, Expository Thoughts on the Gospels, most of his books were collections of slightly modified versions of these tracts. Volumes which have been reprinted in recent years, such as Knots Untied, Old Paths, Holiness and Practical Religion, were all collections of updated versions of these tracts.^5^
In 1880, at the age of 63, Ryle was persuaded to become the first Bishop of Liverpool. Unknown to Ryle, his appointment by Benjamin Disraeli, just days before he was to leave office and be replaced as Prime Minister by the Anglo-Catholic William Gladstone, was a political move to give the Evangelical Tory MP for Liverpool the best opportunity of retaining his seat. In the concluding chapters Mr Murray details how Ryle’s priorities, as the first bishop of this geographically-compact but densely-populated diocese, were the provision of more clergy and more places of worship. Whilst in Liverpool he, regrettably, along with C H Spurgeon and Andrew Bonar, gave his support to the evangelistic endeavours of the unordained American evangelist D L Moody, believing with George Whitefield that, “it was far better for men to be uncanonically saved than canonically damned” (p 134).
Iain Murray also describes very fairly the challenges and difficulties a bishop with Ryle’s Protestant beliefs had to face, in the 20 years prior to his death. He declined to ask his clergy to conduct daily matins and vespers and saint’s day services, holding the view it would be more useful to go from house to house among the people, giving cottage lectures or conducting Bible classes, young men’s meetings, temperance meetings and prayer meetings (pp 165-166). As the title of the volume indicates, Ryle was prepared to stand alone in the face, not only of Romanism and Anglo-Catholicism, but also of liberalism and the rejection of the authority of Scripture. One of the greatest sadnesses of his life must have been to see his son Herbert Ryle^6^ reject his father’s theology and embrace liberalism.^7^
Iain Murray concludes the volume with a chapter on how J C Ryle speaks to us today. In the introduction to the biography he writes, “What Ryle once wrote of others who taught the Word of God has proved true again in his own case, ‘Some believers are rivers of living water long after they die. They do good by their books and writings in every part of the world, long after the hands which held the pen are moulting in the dust. Such men were Bunyan, and Baxter, and Owen, and George Herbert, and Robert M’Cheyne. These blessed servants of God do more good probably by their books at this moment, than they did by their tongues when they were alive. Being dead they yet speak’ (Heb 11:4).”
It is not difficult for Free Presbyterians committed to the doctrine, worship and practice of the Westminster Standards to demur from aspects of Ryle’s witness, but with the first editor of this Magazine it is surely right to say, as he did when the first Bishop of Liverpool died, “Whatever defects and errors attach to the Church of England, it were mere folly to deny that Christ has signally adorned it from age to age with shining examples of true Christianity”.^8^
We heartily recommend this account of J C Ryle’s life by Iain Murray to our readers. It is produced to the Banner of Truth Trust’s normally high standard, in both hardback and paperback. The paperback is remarkably inexpensive, though the hardback edition is recommended.
^1^A review article of J C Ryle – Prepared to Stand Alone, by Iain H Murray, published by the Banner of Truth Trust, 2016, 288 pp, hardback, £15.00; paperback, £8.50. Obtainable from the Free Presbyterian Bookroom.
^2^D Martyn Lloyd-Jones, foreword to John Charles Ryle, Holiness, London, 1956, p iii. Handley Carr Glyn Moule (1841-1920) was principal of Ridley Hall in Cambridge before becoming the Bishop of Durham in 1901. He was a leading speaker at, and a staunch supporter of, the Keswick Convention.
^3^These began with Peter Toon editing Ryle’s partial autobiography, with a biographical account of his later life by Michael J Smout, J C Ryle – A Self Portrait, Reiner, 1974. Toon and Smout then wrote the first detailed biography, John Charles Ryle – Evangelical Bishop, Reiner, 1976. This was followed in 1983 by Marcus L Loane, John Charles Ryle – 1816-1900, Hodder and Stoughton; Ian D Farley, J C Ryle – First Bishop of Liverpool, Paternoster, 2000; Eric Russell, That Man of Granite with the Heart of a Child, Christian Focus, 2001, J I Packer, Faithfulness and Holiness – The Witness of J C Ryle, Crossway, 2002, and Alan Munden, Bishop J C Ryle – Prince of Tract Writers, Day One, 2012. These biographies, along with Iain Murray’s, show the contrast in the last 40 years between Ryle and Moule. Beyond a short booklet by Marcus Loane, there have been no further biographical accounts of Bishop Moule, besides the one written shortly after his death by J B Harford and F C Macdonald, Handley Carr Glyn Moule, Hodder and Stoughton, 1922.
^4^This was the designation of the early Oxford, or Anglo-Catholic, movement in the nineteenth century. The leaders of the movement produced tracts advocating the re-introduction of Romish practices into the Church of England.
^5^Iain Murray shows, on p 124, how Ryle’s book on the Reformers, Light from Old Times, developed from previously-published material.
^6^Herbert Edward Ryle (1856-1925), like his father, went to school at Eton but afterwards was at Cambridge rather than Oxford. He was successively Bishop of Exeter and of Winchester and then Dean of Westminster and was knighted (Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order) in 1921. Though he abandoned his father’s Biblical theology he remained very close to him on a personal level and regarded him with affection.
^7^This is dealt with extensively in Appendix 2 to the biography on pp 249-259.
^8^Free Presbyterian Magazine (July 1900) vol 5, pp 118-119.