On the 29th of October 1845, Ryle married Matilda Charlotte Louisa in Helmingham Church. At 29 years old, he was considered late in marriage. This was deliberate as he would only consider marriage when he had sufficient financial resources. Everything was blissful for the couple until they had the first child in March 1847. Matilda became extremely ill and developed severe post-natal depression. Her physical condition worsened over time; before long she was diagnosed with lung disease. She was so weak that Ryle was only allowed with her for only twenty or thirty minutes at a time.
They tried everything that was possible, but eventually she died on the 25th June 1848. Throughout the three months after her death, Ryle struggled to come out of his grief. Speaking about this: “[it] was indeed a solitary, dreary, miserable period, and I often felt as if everything was going wrong, and as if everything I touched must come to no good.” By God’s providence and grace, he could bear testimony that “It is all for the best. I am in the hands of a sovereign God… God was fitting me for an after-work in a way I did not know.”
In time, God provided him with another companion. On the 21st of February 1850, he married Jessy Elizabeth Walker. She was a close friend of Ryle’s first wife and the god-mother to their baby. However, after only six months of happy marriage, “she became very unwell, and from that time till she died, a period of nearly ten years, she really never was well more than three months together.” Her health was so frail that all her pregnancies were difficult and they were constantly travelling to London to get adequate medical help.
As a minister of God, he was reluctant to be absent from the pulpit unless it was truly necessary. For the ten years before Jessy’s death, he tried his best to be close to home. As he puts it: “Few can have any idea how much wear and tear and anxiety of mind and body I had to go through for at least five years before my wife died. I very rarely ever slept out of my own house, in order that I might be in the way if my wife wanted anything. I have frequently in the depth of winter driven distances of twelve, fifteen, twenty or even thirty miles in an open carriage to speak or preach, and then returned home the same distance immediately afterwards, rather than sleep away from my own house. As to holidays, rest or recreations in the year, I never had any at all while the whole business of entertaining and amusing three little boys in an evening devolved entirely upon me. In fact the whole state of things was a heavy strain upon me both in body and mind, and I often wondered how I lived through it.” Eventually, Jessy’s kidneys malfunctioned and in May 1860, his second wife passed away at the age of 38 years old.
God provided another companion to him after moving into Stradbroke in 1861: Henrietta Clowes. She showed no physical problems and lived to the year 1889, a year before Ryle’s own death. Henrietta was active in service as the church organist, Sunday School teacher and the village photographer. She loved her step-children and was loved by them as well. Truly the Lord turned the seasons of darkness in Ryle’s family life into one that exuded love and warmth. This was evidenced by the testimony of one who had stayed with them as a schoolboy: “The atmosphere of the house was… devotional: daily bible readings, somewhat lengthy family prayers, and a good deal of religious talk. But all was quite wholesome and unpretentious, and I don’t think any of us were bored….” However, it is to be noted that Ryle saw the death of all three of his wives.
Among his five children, Herbert Ryle was one of the more loved by his father. When Herbert informed the family that he will miss their annual holiday at Keswick, his father replied: “We all like to see as much as we can of you and we should think it hard if we were at Keswick and you not in the same house with us. I for one should hardly care to go. At your age you can have little idea how much an old fellow like me, whose contemporaries and schoolfellows are all dead counts on seeing all he can of his children.”
Like his father before him, he entered into Eton in 1868 and moved on to King’s College, Cambridge (North of London) where he became a high achiever. In 1882 he was ordained and the year later he was under his father as a visiting minister (chaplain) at Liverpool. He tried his best to be in the same evangelical position as his father. However, when liberal theology had already penetrated much of the churches in England, Herbert surprised all by joining those who attacked the sufficiency and inerrancy of the Bible. He was then a professor in Cambridge. He believed that the advancement of human knowledge have proven that Bible is not divinely inspired.
C. Ryle was so disappointed with his son’s change in position that he had to stop his son from being his visiting/examining minister. Worse, the differences in beliefs became public knowledge and were used by J.C. Ryle’s enemies against him. Herbert believed that the Church of England stands better to compromise with others on matters of theology, while his father, as the Reformers before believed, that true unity can only be made when we stand on firm theology. The result was that the father became more isolated and ignored compared to the younger Ryle.
Often, the greatest blows that a servant of God has to endure comes not from outward attacks, but from those within, those closest to them. If Ryle had cast his confidence on men, he would have been crushed and unable to stand up. However, Ryle was standing with the Lord, and feared not the disappointments and the pain that comes into his life, knowing that “Behind a frowning providence, [God] hides a smiling face” (William Cowper).