Excerpts from Matthew

J. C. RYLE

The brightest days of the Church have been those when preaching has been honoured; the darkest days of the Church have been those when it has been lightly esteemed.  Let us honour the Sacraments and public prayers of the Church, and reverently use them; but let us beware that we do not place them above preaching.


Let us notice the class of men whom the Lord Jesus chose to be His disciples.  They were of the poorest and humblest rank in life.  Peter, and Andrew, and James, and John, were all "fishermen."

The religion of our Lord Jesus Christ was not intended for the rich and learned alone: it was intended for all the world: and the majority of all the world will always be the poor.  Poverty and ignorance of books, excluded thousands from the notice of the boastful philosophers of the heathen world: they exclude no one from the highest place in the service of Christ.  Is a man humble? Does he feel his sins?  Is he willing to hear Christ's voice and follow Him?  If this be so, he may be the poorest of the poor, but he shall  be found as high as any in the kingdom of heaven.  Intellect, and money, and rank, are worth nothing without grace.

The religion of Christ must have been from heaven, or it never could have prospered and overspread the earth as it has done.  It is vain for infidels to attempt to answer this argument: it cannot be answered.  A religion which did not flatter the rich, the great, and the learned,  -  a religion which offered no license to the carnal inclinations of man's heart,  -  a religion whose first teachers were poor fishermen, without wealth, rank, or power,  -  such a religion could never have turned the world upside down, if it had not been of God.  Look at the Roman emperors and the heathen priests with their splendid temples on the one side!  Look at a few unlearned working men with the Gospel on the other!  Were there ever two parties so unequally matched?  Yet the weak proved strong, and the strong proved weak.  Heathenism fell, and Christianity took its place.  Christianity must have been of God.


To be willing to come to Jesus as helpless, lost sinners, and commit our souls into His hands is a mighty privilege: let us ever bless God if this willingness is ours, for it is His gift.  Such faith is better than all other gifts and knowledge in the world.  Many a poor converted heathen, who knows nothing but that he is sick of sin, and trusts in Jesus, shall sit down in heaven, while many learned English scholars are rejected for evermore.  Blessed indeed are they that believe!

What do we each know of this faith?  This is the great question.  Our learning may be small: but do we believe?  -  Our opportunities of giving and working for Christ's cause may be few: but do we believe?  -  We may neither be able to preach, nor write, nor argue for the Gospel: but do we believe?  -  May we never rest till we can answer this inquiry!  Faith in Christ appears a small and simple thing to the children of this world.  They see in it nothing great or grand.  But faith in Christ is most precious in God's sight, and, like most precious things, is rare.  By it true Christians live; buy it they stand; by it they overcome the world. Without this faith no one can be saved.
   (J. C. Ryle, Expository Thoughts on Matthew)