The Bishop of Liverpool
|
JOHN CHARLES
RYLE, first Bishop of Liverpool.
Too seldom has so sound and earnest a preacher
of the
Gospel as the Bishop of
Liverpool stood in a pulpit of
the English Church. A personal friend of the late Dr.
Ryle thus writes of him:
"I was the first to ask him to
preach in Oxford, though
he had gained a Craven classical scholarship, and a place
in the first class of the famous Oxford Final Classical
School, twenty-eight years before that.
"He told me on his first visit the simple means by which
God had taught him the
truth. He happened to go into
one of the Churches near Christ Church one Sunday after-
noon. A stranger read prayers, but did not preach; he
remembered nothng about the sermon. But the stranger
read the second chapter of Paul’s epistle to the Ephesians
with great impressiveness, and placed a pause between
each clause of the eighth verse. He read it thus: "By
grace are ye
saved--through
faith--and that not
of yourselves--it is the gift of
God" (Eph. 2. 8).
"The Holy
Spirit used that one verse to enlighten the
mind and
convert the
heart of the manly, energetic, and
able undergraduate, who, up to that time, with all the
classical learning which, soon afterwards, enabled him to
take first-class honours, had not learned the glorious
Gospel of the blessed Lord (1
Tim. 1. 11).
|
|