His early years were spent in Bristol, and he was educated at the Baptist college, over which his father presided, and at the University of Edinburgh, where he was a pupil of Dr Thomas Brown.
His earliest compositions were inserted in The Visitor (Bristol, 1823); he was a writer in the Baptist Magazine, and he edited vols.
To the eighth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica he contributed memoirs of John Foster, Andrew Fuller, Kitto, Robert Robinson, Schleiermacher, and Schwartz, and the articles "Northampton" and "Northamptonshire".
Translations by Ryland included Blaise Pascal's Thoughts on Religion, Bernard Jacobi on the General Epistle of St. James, Felix Neff's Dialogues on Sin and Salvation, Ernst Sartorius's Lectures on Christ, Karl Gottlieb Semisch's Life of Justin Martyr, François Gaussen's Canon of the Holy Scriptures, August Tholuck's Guido and Julius and Old Testament and the New, Christian Gottlob Barth's Weaver of Quelbrunn, Johann Peter Lange's Life of Christ (vol.
), two treatises by Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg, and several volumes by Augustus Neander on the History of the Church and its Dogmas.