The minister who keeps back hell from his people in his sermons is neither a faithful nor a charitable man.
J. C. RyleRead
Faith is to the soul what life is to the body. Prayer is to faith what breath is to the body. How a person can live and not breathe is past my comprehension, and how a person can believe and not pray is past my comprehension too.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Faith fuels our spiritual existence just as life sustains our physical being, and prayer is essential to nurture that faith.
In this quote, J. C. Ryle compares the relationship between faith and the soul to that of life and the body, emphasizing that just as the body requires breath to live, the soul needs prayer to sustain faith. The speaker expresses confusion over how one can neglect such fundamental practices for their spiritual and physical well-being, underscoring the interconnectedness of faith, prayer, and the necessity of engaging both for a fulfilled life.
Themes
FaithPrayerSoulBodyLifeBreathBelieve
In practice
Example use cases
In a sermon, to highlight the importance of prayer in a believer's life.
More from J. C. Ryle
All quotes →Good hymns are an immense blessing to the Church. They train people for heaven, where praise is one of the principal occupations.
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When I speak of a man growing in grace, I mean simply this - that his sense of sin is becoming deeper, his faith stronger, his hope brighter, his love more extensive, his spiritual mindedness more marked.
J. C. RyleRead
Those who confine God's love exclusively to the elect appear to me to take a narrow and contracted view of God's character and attributes....I have long come to the conclusion that men may be _x000D_ more systematic in their statements than the Bible, and may be led into grave error by idolatrous veneration of a system
J. C. RyleRead
Never be satisfied with the world's standard of Christianity!
J. C. RyleRead
Sunday morning, before we go to hear the Word of God preached...let us not rush into God’s presence careless, reckless, and unprepared, as if it mattered not in what way such work was done. Let us carry with us faith, reverence, and prayer. If these three are our companions, we will hear with profit, and return with praise.
J. C. RyleRead
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People think of faith as being something that you don't really believe, a device in helping you believe simply it. Of course that is quite wrong. As Pascal says, faith is a gift of God. It is different from the proof of it. It is the kind of faith God himself places in the heart, of which the proof is often the instrument... He says of it, too, that it is the heart which is aware of God, and not reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not be reason.
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