Quotes from JC Ryle

Every living thing which God creates requires food. The life that God imparts needs sustaining and nourishing. It is so with animal and vegetable life,—with birds, beasts, fishes, reptiles, insects, and plants. It is equally so with spiritual life. When the Holy Ghost raises a man from the death of sin and makes him a new creature in Christ Jesus, the new principle in that man's heart requires food, and the only food which will sustain it is the Word of God.

He believed that God was all merciful. Reason and sense might hint that a more pleasant manner of deliverance might be found, that some compromise might be effected, and many hardships be avoided. But faith told Moses that God was love, and would not give His people one drop of bitterness beyond what was absolutely needed.

What do we think of Christ? Have we felt our need of Him and fled to Him for peace? Is He king over our hearts and all things to our souls? What do we think of the Holy Spirit? Has He wrought a saving work in our hearts? Has He renewed and changed them? Has He made us partakers of the divine nature? Life or death depend on our answers to these questions. If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him (Romans 8:9).

Train them in the way they should go and not in the way they would go. Remember, children are born with a decided bias towards evil; therefore, if you let them choose for themselves, they are certain to choose wrong.

His pleasures and wishes must not determine his direction. He doesn't know yet what is good for his mind and soul, any more than what is good for his body.

Fear puts an end to openness; fear leads to secrecy; fear sows the seed of much hypocrisy and leads to many lies.

Faith told Moses that affliction and suffering were not real evils.--They were the school of God, in which He trains the children of grace for glory--the medicines which are needful to purify our corrupt wills--the furnace which must burn away our dross--the knife which must cut the ties that bind us to the world.

All of this is one of God's merciful arrangements. He gives your children a mind that will receive impressions like moldable moist clay. He gives them a disposition at the beginning of life to believe what you tell them, to take for granted what you advise them, and to trust your word rather than a stranger's. In short, He gives you a golden opportunity of doing them good. See that the opportunity is not neglected and thrown away. Once it slips away, it is gone forever.

Miserable indeed is that religious teaching which calls itself Christian but contains nothing of the cross. A man who teaches in this way might as well profess to explain the solar system but tell his hearers nothing about the sun.

Excitement may galvanize the Christian's hands into a fitful and spasmodic activity. But there will be no patient continuance in well-doing, no unwearied labour in missionary work at home or abroad, without love.

When you know how a nation deals with the Bible you may generally know what a nation is.

No interest should weigh on you so much as their eternal interests. No part of them should be as dear to you as that part which will never die.