Holiness - Ryle - XIX - Chapter 19

Required reading
Holiness by J C Ryle (available from Amazon or free on the internet, here for example) - Read Chapter 19 (Want of the times).

My summary
Now Ryle counsels us that 'next to our Bibles and our own hearts, our Lord would have us study our own times.'

The times Ryle lives in require:
1. a bold and unflinching maintenance of the entire truth of Christianity, and the divine authority of the Bible;
2. distinct and decided views of Christian doctrine;
3. an awakened and livelier sense of the unscriptural and soul–ruining character of Romanism;
4. a higher standard of personal holiness, and an increased attention to practical religion in daily life;
5. more regular and steady perseverance in the old ways, of getting good for our souls.

What grabbed me
Amazing how relevant this chapter was considering it is supposed to be specific to the late 1800s.  Ryle wrote: 'Our lot is cast in an age of abounding unbelief, skepticism and, I fear I must add, infidelity. Never, perhaps, since the days of Celsus, Porphyry and Julian, was the truth of revealed religion so openly and unblushingly assailed, and never was the assault so speciously and plausibly conducted. The words which Bishop Butler wrote in 1736 are curiously applicable to our own days "It is come to be taken for granted by many people, 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." I often wonder what the good bishop would have now said, if he had lived in 1879.'

One can only imagine what the good bishop would have said if he had lived in 2010!

I think we would do well to implement Ryle's five remedies, as own times require them just as much as his, if not more so.

Next week's reading
Read Chapter 20 (Christ is all).

Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.