Realizing the date this was written makes it all the more poignant and JC Ryle’s book all the more timeless…

There is an Athenian love of novelty abroad, and a morbid distate for anything old and regular, and in the beaten path of our forefathers. Thousands will crowd to hear a new voice and a new doctrine, without considering for a moment whether what they hear is true. There is an incessant craving after any teaching which is sensational, and exciting, and rousing to the feelings. There is an unhealthy appetite for a sort of spasmodic and hysterical Christianity. The religious life of many is little better than spiritual dram-drinking (JP: a dram is similar to a shot, of alcohol), and the “meek and quiet spirit” which St. Peter commends is clean forgotten (1 Pet 3:4). Crowds, and crying, and hot rooms, and high-flown singing, and an incessant rousing of the emotions are the only things which many care for. Inability to distinguish differences in doctrine is spreading far and wide, and so long as the preacher is “clever” and “earnest,” hundreds seem to think it must be all right, and call you dreadfully “narrow and uncharitable” if you hint that he is unsound! …All this is sad, very sad.

— JC Ryle, Holiness, written at the end of the ‘Introduction’