BEING AN ATTEMPT TO SHOW THE VALUE OF Thoroughness IN SEVERAL DEPARTMENTS OF Christian Life and Practice. BY THE REV. SIR EMILIUS BAYLEY, BART. B.D. PREFACE. It is my object in the following pages to show the value and importance of thoroughness in various departments of Christian life and practice. I am sanguine enough to believe that true religion has been, and still is, making real progress in this country but by true religion I understand, not that which a man outwardly professes, but that which, as Carlyle says, he practically lays to heart. It is to be feared that much of the religion of the present day is shallow and superficial. Christian influence affects the surface of many lives, where it fails to reach the hidden springs of thought and action. Men can talk and write about religion; can ally themselves to parties, hold views, call themselves high, low, broad, moderate; whilst yet remaining strangers to deep personal conviction, and living in ignorance of that laborious toil with which earnest |