Practical Religion / Being Plain Papers on the Daily Duties, Experience, Dangers, and Privileges of Professing Christians

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BEING PLAIN PAPERS
ON THE DAILY DUTIES, EXPERIENCE, DANGERS, AND
PRIVILEGES OF PROFESSING CHRISTIANS
JOHN CHARLES RYLE, D.D.,
BAKER BOOK HOUSE Grand Rapids, Michigan
The volume now in the reader's hands is intended to be a companion to two other volumes which I have already published, entitled Knots Untied, and Old Paths.
Knots Untied consists of a connected series of papers, systematically arranged, about the principal points which form the subject of controversy among Churchmen in the present day. All who take interest in such disputed questions as the nature of the Church, the Ministry, Baptism, Regeneration, the Lord's Supper, the Real Presence, Worship, Confession, and the Sabbath, will find them pretty fully discussed in Knots Untied.
Old Paths consists of a similar series of papers about those leading doctrines of the Gospel which are generally considered necessary to salvation. The inspiration of Scripture, sin, justification, forgiveness, repentance, conversion, faith, the work of Christ, and the work of the Holy Spirit, are the principal subjects handled in Old Paths.
The present volume contains a series of papers about practical religion, and treats of the daily duties, dangers, experience, and privileges of all who profess and call themselves true Christians. Read in conjunction with another work I have previously put out, called Holiness, I think it will throw some light on what every believer ought to be, to do, and expect.
One common feature will be found in all the three volumes. I avow it frankly at the outset, and will not keep it back for a moment. The standpoint I have tried to occupy, from first to last, is that of an Evangelical Churchman.
I say this deliberately and emphatically. I am fully aware that Evangelical churchmanship is not popular and acceptable in this day. It is despised by many, and has no form or comeliness in their eyes. To avow attachment to Evangelical views, in some quarters, is to provoke a sneer, and to bring on yourself the reproach of being an unlearned and ignorant man. But none of these things move me. I am not ashamed of my opinions. After forty years of Bible-reading and praying, meditation and theological study, I find myself clinging more tightly than ever to Evangelical religion, and more than ever satisfied with it. It wears well: it stands the fire. I know no system of religion which is better. In the faith of it I have lived for the third of a century, and in the faith of it I hope to die.