J C Ryle
1 Chronicles 12:32. Men that had understanding of the times.
4. The times require of us a higher standard of personal holiness and increased attention to practical religion in daily life.
I must honestly declare my conviction that, since the days of the Reformation, there never has been so much profession of religion without practice, so much talking about God without walking with Him, so much hearing God’s words without doing them, as there now is in England. Never were there so many empty tubs and tinkling cymbals. Never was there so much formality and so little reality.
The whole tone of people’s minds on what constitutes practical Christianity seems lowered. The old golden standard of the behaviour which becomes a Christian man or woman appears debased. You may see scores of religious people (so-called) continually doing things which in days gone by would have been thought utterly inconsistent with vital religion. They see no harm in such things as card-playing, theatre-going, dancing, incessant novel-reading and Sabbath-travelling, and they cannot in the least understand what you mean by objecting to them. The ancient tenderness of conscience about such things seems to be dying away – and becoming extinct like the dodo. And when you venture to remonstrate with young communicants who indulge in them, they only stare at you as an old-fashioned, narrow-minded, fossilised person and say, Where is the harm? In short, laxity of ideas among young men and levity among young women are only too common as characteristics of the rising generation of professing Christians.
Now in saying all this I wish no one to mistake me. I disclaim the slightest wish to recommend an ascetic religion. Monasteries, convents, complete retirement from the world and refusal to do our duty in it, all these I hold to be unscriptural and mischievous panaceas. Nor can I ever see my way clear to urge on men a standard of perfection for which I find no warrant in God’s Word, a standard which is not attainable in this life, and hands over the management of the affairs of society to the devil and the wicked. No, I always wish to promote a cheerful, manly religion, such as people may carry everywhere and yet glorify Christ.
The pathway to a higher standard of holiness, which I commend to the attention of my readers, is a very simple one, so simple that I can fancy many smiling at it with disdain. But, simple as it is, it is a path sadly neglected and overgrown with weeds, and it is high time to direct men into it. We need then to examine more closely our good old friends, the Ten Commandments. Properly developed as they were by the Puritans, the two tables of God’s law are a perfect mine of practical religion. I think it an evil sign of our day that many clergymen neglect to have the commandments put up in their new, or restored, churches and coolly tell you, They are not needed now. I believe they never were needed so much.
We need to examine more closely such portions of the Lord Jesus Christ’s teaching as the Sermon on the Mount. How rich is that wonderful discourse in food for thought! What a striking sentence that is, “Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Mt 5:20). Alas, that text is rarely used. Last, but not least, we need to study more closely the latter part of nearly all Paul’s Epistles to the churches. They are far too much slurred over and neglected. Scores of Bible readers, I am afraid, are well acquainted with the first 11 chapters of the Epistle to the Romans but know comparatively little of the last five. When Thomas Scott expounded the Epistle to the Ephesians at the old Lock Chapel, he remarked that the congregations became much smaller when he reached the practical part of that blessed book.
You may think my recommendations very simple. I do not hesitate to affirm that attention to them would, by God’s blessing, be most useful to Christ’s cause. I believe it would raise the standard of English Christianity about such matters as family religion, separation from the world, diligence in the discharge of duties, unselfishness, good temper, and general spiritual-mindedness, to a pitch which it seldom attains now.
There is a common complaint in these latter days that there is a want of power in modern Christianity, and that the true Church of Christ, the body of which He is the Head, does not shake the world in the nineteenth century as it used to do in former years. Shall I tell you in plain words what is the reason? It is the low tone of life which is so sadly prevalent among professing believers. We want more men and women who walk with God and before God, like Enoch and Abraham. Though our numbers at this date far exceed those of our Evangelical forefathers, I believe we fall far short of them in our standard of Christian practice.
Where is the self-denial, the redemption of time, the absence of luxury and self-indulgence, the unmistakable separation from earthly things, the manifest air of being always about our Master’s business, the singleness of eye, the simplicity of home life, the high tone of conversation in society, the patience, the humility, the universal courtesy which marked so many of our forerunners 70 or 80 years ago? Yes, where is it indeed? We have inherited their principles and we wear their armour, but I fear we have not inherited their practice. The Holy Ghost sees it and is grieved, and the world sees it and despises us. The world sees it and cares little for our testimony.
It is life, a heavenly, godly, Christ-like life – depend on it – which influences the world. Let us resolve, by God’s blessing, to shake off this reproach. Let us awake to a clear view of what the times require of us in this matter. Let us aim at a much higher standard of practice. Let the time past suffice us to have been content with a half-and-half holiness. For the time to come, let us endeavour to walk with God, to be thorough and unmistakable in our daily life, and to silence, if we cannot convert, a sneering world.
1A further section, as edited, from a chapter in Ryle’s book Holiness (1879). The previous part, last month, emphasised the need for a “livelier sense of the unscriptural and soul-ruining character of Romanism”.