From Holiness, by J.C. Ryle
True holiness does not consist merely of believing and feeling, but of doing and bearing.
Gold may be bought too dear.
The man who does not take pains about these three things must never expect to grow. Here are the roots of true Christianity. Wrong here, a man is wrong all the way through! Here is the whole reason why many professing Christians never seem to get on.
Never should any man or woman despair!
No cross, no crown! No conflict, no saving Christianity!
A letter may be written, which is not sealed; so grace may be written in the heart, yet the Spirit may not set the seal of assurance to it.
A religion without Christ will never save your soul.
Sound Protestant and Evangelical doctrine is useless if it is not accompanied by a holy life.
You may deceive me or any other minister; it is easy to do so. You may receive the bread and wine from my hands, and yet be cleaving to iniquity in your hearts.
A religion that costs nothing is worth nothing!
The bitter must go before the sweet.
The Church of our text is made up of all true believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, of all who are really holy and converted people. It comprehends all who have repented of sin, and fled to Christ by faith, and been made new creatures in Him.
He chose by sight, and not by faith. He asked no counsel of God, to preserve him from mistakes. He looked to the things of time, and not of eternity. He thought of his worldly profit, and not of his soul.
It is useless to try to answer such questions. Let us be content to take the fact as we find it, and see what it is meant to teach us. We have no right whatever to say this thief was a worse man than his companion: there is nothing to prove it.
The same fire which melts the wax hardens the clay.
The fairest babe that has entered life this year, and become the sunbeam of a family, is not, as its mother perhaps fondly calls it, a little ‘angel,’ or a little ‘innocent,’ but a little ‘sinner.’
The day of judgment will prove that many besides husbands have been won without the word by a holy life.
He must fight the flesh. Even after conversion he carries within him a nature prone to evil, and a heart weak and unstable as water. That heart will never be free from imperfection in this world, and it is a miserable delusion to expect it.
Christ is the mainspring both of doctrinal and practical Christianity. A right knowledge of Christ is essential to a right knowledge of sanctification as well as justification. He that follows after holiness will make no progress unless he gives to Christ His rightful place.
Nothing so hardens the heart of man as a barren familiarity with sacred things.
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