The Cross: A Tract for the Times

Among the most urgent documents in Victorian religious publishing, this short work confronts a question most Christians would rather leave unanswered. J.C. Ryle, one of the nineteenth century's most forthright evangelical voices, turns his attention to the comfortable believers of his age, and yours. What separates genuine faith from mere religious performance? What does it actually mean to glory in the cross? Ryle builds his argument from a single explosive text: Paul's declaration to the Galatian churches that he would "glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." From this foundation, he dismantles every substitute for true salvation, religious observance, baptismal membership, church attendance, moral achievement. The cross, he insists, must be the sole foundation or there is no foundation at all. Written with the directness of a physician diagnosing a terminal case, Ryle believed souls hung in the balance. His writing crackles with conviction. This is a book for anyone who has ever wondered whether their faith is real or merely nominal, and who wants an answer that matters beyond the grave.