13. John Charles Ryle (1816–1900)
Beware of divisions. One thing the children of the world can always understand, if they do not understand doctrine; that thing is angry quarrelling and controversy. Be at peace among yourselves.”
So wrote Bishop John Charles Ryle in his farewell message to the ministers of the Liverpool Diocese on February 1, 1900, as he closed nearly twenty years of faithful ministry among them. Four months later, on June 10, he died, but he left behind a spiritual legacy that has enriched believers and strengthened the church.
The Church of England, to which Ryle belonged, was not a united people. For years there had been a high-church faction that promoted ritual and always seemed to be drifting nearer to Rome; a broad-church group that was tolerant of diverse religious emphasis but not too enthusiastic for the gospel; and then the low-church segment, known as the evangelicals. It was to this latter group that Bishop Ryle belonged.
The evangelicals in the Church of England grew out of the great revivals of Whitefield and Wesley. Converts who left the national church and united with independent groups were called Methodists. But those who remained in the Anglican Church and were true to their doctrinal convictions were called evangelicals, and they were a great and glorious host. Some of the greatest gospel-preaching ministers in English church history were a part of the evangelical movement—men like William Romaine, Henry Venn, Charles Simeon, William Grimshaw, John Fletcher, and John Newton, who wrote “Amazing Grace.”
It was not easy to be an evangelical in the established church. Evangelicals would not be recognized by those in authority, and would probably not be promoted or offered the better churches. The majority of the clergy endured the presence of the evangelicals the way a fishing party endures gnats and mosquitoes—always hoping they will somehow go away. Evangelical clergy were not appointed to the boards of various church ministries or, for the most part, asked to preach at important church functions. But the evangelicals practiced their faith and made monumental contributions to both the church and the nation. It was the evangelicals who led the fight against slavery, child labor, poor factory conditions, and the abuse of the poor and the insane. Much of what we value in modern social legislation, and perhaps take for granted, grew out of the ministry of Wesley and Whitefield and their successors.
The evangelicals also founded a number of effective organizations to promote the spread of the gospel: the Church Missionary Society (1799), Religious Tract Society (1799), British and Foreign Bible Society (1804), and several more. They had a burden for Israel and started a mission board for witness to the Jews. In both home and foreign missions, they led the way, seeking to win the lost and build new churches. They shocked their more proper brethren by daring to preach out-of-doors, as Jesus and Paul did. They even held evangelistic services in unconsecrated buildings. For all of this, of course, they were criticized; but their only concern was to please their Master, so they kept right on.
John Charles Ryle was born May 10, 1816, in Macclesfield, Cheshire, the center of the great silk industry in Britain. The Ryle family had long been established there and were quite prosperous. Several of their men, including Ryle’s father, had served as mayor. There was a strong evangelical element in the family’s faith, going all the way back to 1745, when John Wesley himself had preached in that region.
At age twelve Ryle entered prep school, leaving in 1827 to enter Eaton, from which he graduated in 1834. He then enrolled in Oxford, and in the year he graduated (1837) he was soundly converted. His sister and cousin had been converted earlier and had witnessed to him. A serious illness just before his final examinations also gave him time to reflect on his life and consider spiritual things.
He had attended one of the parish churches one Sunday afternoon, but neither the sermon nor the hymns made any impression on him. But when a man began to read the second Scripture lesson for the day, the Word gripped Ryle’s heart. The passage was Ephesians 2, and when the reader got to verse 8, he read it with special emphasis: “For by grace are ye saved—through faith—and that not of yourselves—it is the gift of God.” Young Ryle believed that Word, and God saved him.
In preparation for sharing his father’s banking business, Ryle studied law in London, but after six months he had to return home because of ill health. However, he soon recovered and entered into business with enthusiasm. He was considered one of the most eligible bachelors in the district: young, popular, successful, and a devoted Christian. But he was afraid of women. His father offered him a house and a large sum of money if he would marry, but even these incentives did not move him.
In June 1841, the bank failed and the family lost everything. Ryle’s father had followed some bad advice and had hired an untrustworthy manager; the combination of the two brought ruin. The family was left with Mrs. Ryle’s dowry, some personal property, and their clothes. Mr. Ryle spent the next twenty years paying back every cent of his debt, with each member of the family assisting in every way possible. Even when John was rector at Helmingham, he wore threadbare clothes in order to save money and assist his father. He firmly believed that his father’s spiritual falling away was the real cause for the failure of the bank.
Before the year 1841 was over, young John determined that God had called him to the ministry. He was ordained December 12 and preached his first sermon December 19. He began his ministry at Exbury and then was appointed to Winchester; these brief experiences helped prepare him for the longer ministries that were to follow. From 1844 to 1861, he served at Helmingham, where he had a rather difficult time with the lord of the manor, who tried to run both the town and the church. Ryle went through the valley during those years, burying his wife of less than two years in 1847 and his second wife in 1860.
From 1861 to 1880, Ryle ministered at Stradbroke, and during that time he met and married his third wife. These were happier years. For one thing, there was no rich landlord throwing his weight around and, for another, Ryle’s people loved him and were eager to hear the Word preached. He led them in the physical restoration of the old church, making certain that the pulpit was given its proper place of prominence. He had the workmen carve on the pulpit “Woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel!” When the workmen had finished, he took a tool and underlined the word “not” with a deep groove.
In 1880, John Charles Ryle was appointed the first Bishop of Liverpool, a new diocese that had been carved out of the Chester diocese. How did it happen that an evangelical was appointed to this important position and given the opportunity to build an evangelical ministry from the ground up? From the human point of view, the appointment may have just been a piece of religious politics, but God certainly overruled it for the good of his church.
At the February 1880 election, Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli suffered an overwhelming defeat at the hand of Gladstone. Disraeli was anxious that a staunch Protestant be appointed to the new post, and the leading churchmen of Liverpool were behind him. The fact that Liverpool was Gladstone’s hometown made Disraeli’s decision even more significant. Ryle was given a very little time to consider the offer because time was working against them; he immediately accepted, and three days before Gladstone took office all the formalities had been completed.
On May 4, Oxford University conferred the Doctor of Divinity degree on him, and on June 11 he was consecrated as bishop. It is doubtful that Ryle would ever have been considered for the post had he not proved himself to be a sane, spiritual evangelical who was willing to listen to those he disagreed with and ignore those who threw stones of accusation from the fringes of the camp. Ryle let it be known from the beginning where he stood on the great doctrines of the faith; he also made it clear that he was going to use his new position to promote harmony, not conflict, in the church.
One of Ryle’s first tasks was to build a ministry in Liverpool, and this he did, gathering around him like-minded Christians who wanted to share the gospel and build churches. Instead of raising money to construct an ornate cathedral, Ryle used the funds available to extend the church. He built ninety places of worship and staffed them with 136 ministers. He established a ministry of “Bible women” to assist the resident clergy and to take the gospel to the poor. He organized ministries for children and even used secular buildings for religious services. He was too conservative for the liberals and too liberal for the conservatives, so he was attacked from both sides. But he valiantly carried on a positive ministry, never dishonoring the Savior or diluting the doctrines of the Reformed faith. Before long, church life in the Liverpool diocese began to take on a new spirit of excitement, and God began to bless.
Always a man with a great heart, Ryle saw nothing wrong in cooperating with the nonconformists, including D. L. Moody and Ira Sankey when they came to Liverpool in 1883. His friendly attitude toward the Methodists rankled some of the more exclusive Anglican clergy, but their criticisms did not disturb him.
On February 1, 1900, Bishop Ryle resigned from his charge. He had lived to see nearly one-fourth of the parishes in his diocese staffed by evangelicals. When he was buried in Liverpool, his old Bible was placed in his hand in the coffin. Two texts were quoted on his gravestone: Ephesians 2:8 and 2 Timothy 4:7, which states, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.”
Baker Books has reprinted a number of Bishop Ryle’s books, including his monumental Expository Thoughts on the Gospels, a set that ought to be in every Bible student’s library. The Best of J. C. Ryle is a good sampler for the reader not yet acquainted with this giant of the faith. His books Holiness, The New Birth, and Call to Prayer deal with essentials of the Christian life. The True Christian is a collection of Ryle’s sermons on many subjects that relate to the Christian life.
Ryle was always a true son of the church, but he took a very definite evangelical interpretation of the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England. He explains his position in Knots United, published by James Clarke.
Banner of Truth Trust has reprinted Warnings to the Churches, a series of addresses that focus primarily on the church and its ministry (several of these chapters also appear in Knots United). Ryle’s biographical studies, Five Christian Leaders and Five English Reformers, are also available from Banner of Truth.
Ryle’s successor, Bishop Chavasses, started the construction of the Liverpool Cathedral, with the laying of the foundation stone by King Edward VII in 1904. Queen Elizabeth II shared in the service of dedication when the building was completed on October 25, 1978. It is a beautiful sandstone building, and my wife and I visited it a few years ago. It was the south choir aisle I was especially interested in, for in that aisle is a monument to the glory of God and in honor of his servant, Bishop John Charles Ryle. However, his greatest monument is not man-made. It is in the living church, in the lives of men and women who even today are touched by his ministry.
“I am firmly persuaded,” he wrote, “that there is no system so life-giving, so calculated to awaken the sleeping, lead on the inquiring, and build up the saints, as that system which is called the evangelical system of Christianity. Wherever it is faithfully preached, and efficiently carried out, and consistently adorned by the lives of its professors, it is the power of God. . . .We have the truth, and we need not be afraid to say so.”