The nineteenth century was an age that witnessed great progress in many areas of exploration and learning. However, according to J.C. Ryle, it was an age of great ignorance too. What particularly distressed Ryle was the scant knowledge of the English Reformation amongst his contemporaries. In this lay a grave danger: one of the reasons so many congregations drift from their evangelical foundations is their ignorance of Christian history, and of the major doctrinal controversies and why they matter.
Therefore, he taught that one of the best ways to stop Christians wavering 'with every changing wind of doctrine' (Eph. 4:14) is to instill in them a deep love for Reformation and Puritan teaching, and a willingness to suffer for those gospel truths. If the church is to be strengthened, then Christians must be persuaded to read the saints of the past and to learn the lessons of church history.
Ryle's abiding hope for this book is that our souls will be stirred to prayer and action by the great testimonies of Reformers and Puritans found within its pages, and then that we will dig deeper into the writings of these spiritual giants.
View an excerpt here.
Light From Old Times is in the following collections:
