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Portrait of J.C. Ryle
Herbert Rose Barraud · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

The Great Cloud of Witnesses · The Missionary Century

J.C. Ryle

1816–1900Reformed Evangelical

Wrote short, blunt tracts for working people by the million, and became Liverpool's first bishop at sixty-four.

Summary

J.C. Ryle lived 1816–1900. This wing places J.C. Ryle in The Missionary Century, 1790–1910.
  • Lived 1816–1900.
  • Stood in The Missionary Century (1790–1910).
  • Hangs on The Awakeners.
  • Read first: Holiness: Its Nature, Hindrances, Difficulties, and Roots (1877).
  • Tradition: Reformed Evangelical / Low-Church Anglican / Calvinist / 19th-c. Protestant Reformation heir.

The life

John Charles Ryle (May 10, 1816 – June 10, 1900) was an English evangelical Anglican bishop, preacher, and prolific tract-writer; he served as the first Bishop of Liverpool from 1880 until his retirement two months before his death. Born to a wealthy Cheshire banking family, Ryle was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, and was preparing for a parliamentary or military career when his father's bank failed in 1841, taking the family fortune.

He was ordained Anglican in 1842 and pastored quiet rural parishes (Helmingham, Stradbroke) in Suffolk for over thirty years, during which he built his reputation on cheap, plain-spoken evangelical tracts distributed by the millions. Appointed dean of Salisbury in early 1880, he was elevated within months to the newly created Liverpool see, where he served as a working evangelical bishop in a heavily Anglo-Catholic environment.

What was happening while he lived9 moments · 1790–1910
  1. 1812The Judsons sail, and Serampore burnsAdoniram and Ann Judson left Salem in February, the first American foreign missionaries sent out by a board. In March a fire at Serampore destroyed Carey's printing house, type, paper, and years of manuscript. He wrote that the loss was heavy but the ground was already cleared, and began again.
  2. 1825George Müller is convertedA German student with a record of lying and petty theft went along to a small Saturday prayer meeting in a private house in Halle, mostly out of curiosity. He walked out changed, and spent the next seventy years proving in public that God answers prayer.
  3. 1840Livingstone sails, and the Burmese Bible is doneDavid Livingstone, a Scottish mill worker who studied medicine at night, left London in December for southern Africa; he had wanted China, but a war closed it and Robert Moffat's talk of "the smoke of a thousand villages" turned him south. That same year Judson finished revising his Burmese Bible, first completed in 1834, twenty-one years after he landed.
  4. 1854Hudson Taylor lands at ShanghaiHe was twenty-one, under-funded, and arrived in the middle of a civil war. Within a few years he had done what no missionary did, put on Chinese dress and gone inland, away from the treaty ports and the protection of gunboats.
  5. 1859The '59 Revival, and Spurgeon's foundation stoneAwakening ran through Ulster and Wales after a season of prayer meetings begun in New York two years earlier; contemporaries counted converts in the tens of thousands, though the figures were estimates made in the moment. In August the foundation stone was laid for Charles Spurgeon's Metropolitan Tabernacle, which opened in 1861 and seated around five thousand.
  6. 1865The China Inland Mission and the Salvation ArmyIn June, walking the beach at Brighton in anguish over inland China, Taylor wrote in his Bible that he was asking God for twenty-four workers, a mission that would ask no one but God for money. The same summer William and Catherine Booth opened a mission in London's East End; it took the name Salvation Army in 1878.
  7. 1873Livingstone dies on his kneesHe was found on the morning of May 1 at Chitambo's village, kneeling by his bed. His African companions Chuma and Susi buried his heart under a tree, dried his body, and carried it roughly a thousand miles to the coast so England could bury him in Westminster Abbey.
  8. 1885The Cambridge SevenSeven young men from Britain's most privileged circles, including the cricketer C. T. Studd, gave up sport, money, and careers and sailed for China with the Inland Mission. Their farewell tour of the universities sent a wave of students into missions on both sides of the Atlantic.
  9. 1904Clouds gathering over WalesIn the autumn a young miner named Evan Roberts began meetings at Loughor, and within months chapels across Wales were full night after night. Reports of about a hundred thousand converts in a year are the era's own estimate, not a count, but the world was watching, and the next era was already breaking.

The Missionary Century: the whole era→

In their own words

  • “The first thing which demands our notice in this passage is the desperate wickedness of the human heart, which it exemplifies. Silenced and defeated by our Lord’s arguments, the Pharisees plunged deeper and deeper into sin. They “went out and held a council against Him how they might destroy Him.” What evil had our Lord done, that he should be so treated? None, none at all. No charge could be brought against his life. He was holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners; his days were spent in doing good. No charge could be brought against his teaching.”

    Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: Matthew · on Matthew 12:14

    “But the Pharisees went out and plotted how they might kill Jesus.”

  • “We see in these verses — a remarkable question asked. We are told that a certain man said to Jesus, "Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?" We do not know who this enquirer was. He may have been a self-righteous Jew, trained to believe that there was no hope for the Gentile, and no salvation for any but the children of Abraham. He may have been an idle trifler with religion, who was ever wasting his time on curious and speculative questions.”

    Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: Luke (lightly modernized text, Grace Gems edition) · on Luke 13:23

    ““Lord,” someone asked Him, “will only a few people be saved?” Jesus answered,”

  • “These verses describe the appointment of our Lord Jesus Christ's twelve apostles. That appointment was the beginning of the Christian ministry . It was the first ordination, and an ordination conducted by the Great Head of the Church Himself. Since the day when the events here recorded took place — there have been many thousands of ordinations. Myriads of bishops, elders, and deacons have been called to the office of the ministry — and often with far more pomp and splendor than we read of here. But never was there so solemn an ordination as this.”

    Expository Thoughts on the Gospels: Luke (lightly modernized text, Grace Gems edition) · on Luke 6:13

    “When daylight came, He called His disciples to Him and chose twelve of them, whom He also designated as apostles:”

Go further

Read them yourself. Public-domain works are free to read in full; the rest open where the book can be found.

Search J.C. Ryle at the Internet Archive · every work MannaFest cites

Why this voice is honored here

Ryle's value for MannaFest is the union of two non-negotiables: (1) holiness as the necessary fruit of regeneration, the diagnostic hammer against cheap-grace evangelicalism, joined to (2) crystal-clear, plain-spoken English prose accessible to the lay Bible student. Holiness (1877) and Expository Thoughts on the Gospels (1856–1869) are the load-bearing texts. Ryle is also one of the few Tier 1 voices whose primary catalog is fully public domain, usable in MannaFest at the body-text level rather than only fair-use-cite-only.

Standing beside himThe Missionary Century · 29 on this stretch of wall

Portrait of William Carey
William Carey1761–1834

A village cobbler who expected great things from God, attempted great things for God, and opened the missions era.

Portrait of Adoniram Judson
Adoniram Judson1788–1850

Survived Burma's death prisons and buried his family there to give the Burmese the Bible they still read.

Portrait of George Müller
George Müller1805–1898

Housed ten thousand orphans in Bristol and never asked anyone but God for a penny.

Portrait of David Livingstone
David Livingstone1813–1873

Walked Africa open for the gospel, shamed the slave trade in print, and died on his knees.

Portrait of Horatio Spafford
Horatio Spafford1828–1888

Wrote 'it is well with my soul' on the deck of a ship crossing the exact water where his four daughters had drowned.

Portrait of William Booth
William Booth1829–1912

Built an army out of the people no church wanted, with soup, soap, and salvation.