For those who study Baptist history, a common theme is the importance of friendship. One such friendship was that of British Baptist pastor John Collett Ryland (1723–1792) and Augustus Toplady (1740–1778). Theirs was not a relationship of mere “iron sharpening iron,” but was a mutually enlivening flame, which serves as an example that can still stoke the embers of our hearts.
Ryland was known to be eccentric and even brash at times, but he was also a devoted, godly, and warm-hearted companion. The great James Hervey (1714–1758) once said to Ryland, “Your heart is made for friendship.”[1] We see this in his connection with Toplady.
These two men spent a great deal of time together in the final decade of Toplady’s life, and it appears that Toplady’s genius and social connections, when mingled with Ryland’s erudition and zeal, created quite an exhilarating friendship indeed. In July 1769, Toplady recorded these wonderful words from Ryland:
When a pump is dry, a pail of water, thrown into it, will fetch it up again. If your soul is in a dry, cold frame, get a lively Christian to tell you his experience: the fire will, probably, catch from his heart to yours.[2]
Ryland was such a lively Christian that he could fan into flame the declining embers of his associates. Fire imagery is often used of Ryland: an explosive temper, a warm kindness, a bright light in the pulpit, and a burning zeal for the Lord. Ryland leaned into this imagery often, for instance:
Zeal for God’s glory, revealed in the gospel, in an eternal grace which will endure as long as God exists: it will flame out in heaven in ten thousand splendors, and brighter than ten thousand suns. Not a lukewarm, drowsy, soul will be found in heaven to eternity: but all the happy throng will be like millions of the most brilliant, intellectual fires; all aspiring upwards towards the lofty throne of God; whilst God himself will return love for love through an eternal duration. We shall then have a composition of all the finest feelings of the mind, acting and re-acting on each other, to raise each to the most intense vigour and fire, streaming into God, and rolling back from God again, to increase the mighty flame.[3]
Even in written form, the passion in these words can hardly remain on the page (or screen) without “catching from his heart to yours.” For Ryland, and no less for us, the “mighty flame” of love to God is always meant to “roll back again” in love to one another.
[1] John Ryland, The Character of the Rev. James Hervey, M.A., Late Rector of Weston-Flavel, in Northamptonshire (London: W. Justins and R. Thomson, 1790), 12.
[2] The Posthumous Works of the Late Reverend Mr. A. M. Toplady (London: J. Mathews, G. Keith, R. Bishop, Hogg and Macgowan, and Murray, 1780), 50.
[3] John Ryland, Contemplations on the Beauties of Creation and on all the Principal Truths and Blessings of the Glorious Gospel; with the Sins and Graces of Professing Christians, vol. 1 (London: Edward and Charles Dilly and T. Vallance, 1777), 396–421.