J C Ryle
1 Chronicles 12:32. Men that had understanding of the times.
These words were written about the tribe of Issachar, in the days when David first began to reign over Israel. It seems that, after Saul’s death, some of the tribes of Israel could not decide what to do. Under which king? was the question of the day in Palestine. Men doubted whether they should cling to the family of Saul, or accept David as their king. Some hung back and would not commit themselves; others came forward boldly and declared for David. Among these last were many of the children of Issachar, and the Holy Ghost gives them a special word of praise. He says, They “were men that had understanding of the times”.
I cannot doubt that this sentence, like every sentence in Scripture, was written for our learning. These men of Issachar are set before us as an example to be followed, for it is most important to understand the times in which we live and to know what those times require. The wise men in the court of Ahasuerus “knew the times” (Est 1:13). The Lord Jesus Christ blames the Jews because they did not “discern the signs of the times” and did not know “the time of [their] visitation” (Mt 16:3, Lk 19:44). Let us take heed lest we fall into the same sin. The man who is content to sit ignorantly by his own fireside, wrapped up in his own private affairs, and has no public eye for what is going on in the Church and the world is a miserable patriot and a
1An edited extract from a chapter in Ryle’s book Holiness. There have been many changes in religious attitudes since 1879, when the book was first published in its present form, but Scripture principles remain unchanged – for other parts of the world besides England.
poor style of Christian. Next to our Bibles and our own hearts, our Lord would have us study our own times.
I propose in this paper to consider what our own times require from us. All ages have their special dangers for professing Christians, and all consequently demand that special attention be given to special duties. I ask my readers to give me their minds for a few minutes while I try to show them what the times require of English Christians. There are five points which I propose to bring before you, and I shall speak of them plainly and without reserve. “If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?” (1 Cor 14:8).
- The times require us to maintain boldly and unflinchingly the entire truth of Christianity, and the divine authority of the Bible. Our lot is cast in an age of abounding unbelief and scepticism. Never perhaps, since the days of Celsus, Porphyry and Julian,2 was the truth of revealed religion so openly and unblushingly assailed. The words of Bishop Butler in 1736 are curiously applicable to our own days: “It is come to be taken for granted by many persons that Christianity is not even a subject of inquiry, but that it is now at length discovered to be fictitious. And accordingly they treat it as if, in the present age, this was an agreed point among all people of discernment, and nothing remained but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule, as it were by way of reprisals for its having so long interrupted the pleasures of the world.”
In reviews, magazines, newspapers, lectures and even in sermons, scores of clever writers are incessantly waging war against the foundations of Christianity. Reason, science, geology, anthropology, modern discoveries and free thought are all boldly asserted to be on their side. No educated person, we are constantly told nowadays, can really believe supernatural religion, or the inspiration of the whole Bible, or the possibility of miracles. Such ancient doctrines as the Trinity, the deity of Christ, the personality of the Holy Spirit, the atonement, the obligation of the Sabbath, the necessity and efficacy of prayer, the existence of the devil, and the reality of future punishment, are quietly put on the shelf as useless old yearbooks, or contemptuously thrown overboard as lumber! All this is done so cleverly and with such an appearance of candour and liberality, and with such compliments to the capacity and nobility of human nature, that multitudes of unstable Christians are carried away as by a flood, and become partially unsettled, if they do not make complete shipwreck of faith.
The existence of this plague of unbelief must not surprise us for a moment. It is only an old enemy in a new dress, an old disease in a new form. Since
2Two Greeks and a Roman who opposed Christianity in its early centuries.
the day when Adam and Eve fell, the devil has never ceased to tempt men not to believe God and has said, directly or indirectly, You shall not die even if you do not believe. In the latter days especially we have warrant of Scripture for expecting an abundant crop of unbelief: “When the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth?” “Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse.” “There shall come in the last days scoffers” (Lk 18:8; 2 Tim 3:13; 2 Pet 3:3). Here in England, scepticism is that natural rebound from semi-popery and superstition which many wise men have long predicted. It is precisely that swing of the pendulum which far-sighted students of human nature looked for, and it has come.
But as I tell you not to be surprised at the widespread scepticism of the times, so also I must urge you not to be shaken in your mind by it, or moved from your steadfastness. There is no real cause for alarm. The ark of God is not in danger, though the oxen seem to shake it. Christianity has survived the attacks of unbelieving writers in previous centuries. These men made a great noise in their day and frightened weak people, but they produced no more effect than idle travellers who scratched their names on the great pyramid of Egypt. Depend on it, Christianity likewise will survive the attacks of the clever writers of these times.
The startling novelty of many modern objections to revelation makes them, no doubt, seem more weighty than they really are. It does not follow, however, that hard knots cannot be untied because our fingers cannot untie them, or that formidable difficulties cannot be explained because our eyes cannot see through them. When you cannot answer a sceptic, be content to wait for more light, but never forsake a great principle. In religion, as in many scientific questions, said Michael Faraday,3 “the highest philosophy is often a judicious suspense of judgement”. “He that believeth shall not make haste”; he can afford to wait.
When sceptics and infidels have said all they can, we must not forget that there are three great broad facts which they have never explained away, and I am convinced they never can and never will. Let me tell you briefly what they are. They are very simple facts, and any plain man can understand them.
(a) Jesus Christ Himself. If Christianity is a mere invention of man and the Bible is not from God, how can infidels explain Jesus Christ? His existence in history they cannot deny. How is it that without force or bribery, without arms or money, He has made such an immensely deep mark on the world – as He certainly has? Who was He? What was He? Where did He come from? How has there never been anyone like Him, neither before nor after, since the beginning of historical times? They cannot explain it. Nothing can explain
3An important British scientist who made a Christian profession, dying in 1867.
it but the great foundation principle of revealed religion, that Jesus Christ is God and His gospel is all true.
(b) The Bible. If Christianity is a mere invention of man, and the Bible is of no more authority than any other uninspired volume, how is it that the Book is what it is? How is it that a Book written by a few Jews in a small corner of the earth – written long ago without collusion among the writers, written by members of a nation which, compared to Greece and Rome, did nothing for literature – how is it that there is nothing that even approaches this Book for high views of God, for true views of man, for solemnity of thought, for grandeur of doctrine and for purity of morality? What account can the infidel give of this Book, so deep, so simple, so wise, so free from defects? He cannot explain its existence and nature on his principles. We only can do so who hold that the Book is supernatural, from God.
(c) The effect which Christianity has produced on the world. If Christianity is a mere invention of man, and not a supernatural, divine revelation, how has it wrought such a complete alteration in the state of mankind? Consider the moral difference between the condition of the world before Christianity was planted and its condition since Christianity took root; any well-read man knows it is the difference between night and day, the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of the devil. At this very moment, I defy anyone to look at the map of the world and compare the countries where people are Christians with those where people are not Christians, and to deny that these countries are as different as light and darkness. How can any infidel explain this on his principles? He cannot do it. We only can who believe that Christianity came down from God and is the only divine religion in the world.
Whenever you are tempted to be alarmed at the progress of infidelity, look at the three facts I have just mentioned and cast your fears away. Take up your position boldly behind the ramparts of these three facts, and you may safely defy the utmost efforts of modern sceptics. They may often ask you a hundred questions that you cannot answer, and start ingenious problems about inspiration, or geology, or the origin of man, or the age of the world which you cannot solve. They may vex and irritate you with wild speculations and theories, whose fallacy you cannot prove at the time, though you feel it. But be calm and do not fear. Remember the three great facts I have named, and boldly challenge sceptics to explain them away. The difficulties of Christianity are no doubt great; but, depend on it, they are nothing compared to the difficulties of infidelity.
A gracious man makes this request for his soul: Lord, let me rather have a gracious heart than a great estate; let me rather be pious without prosperity than prosperous without piety.
William SKEKER