Excerpt from The Decay of Faith: Four Sermons Preached in the Church of the Immaculate Conception, Farm Street, on the Sunday Afternoons of February, 1885<br><br>Our own family, profess this false creed. We know them and love them, and there is much to love in them. Through our affection for them we may easily become indifferent to their misbelief. We delude ourselves, perhaps, that they are in good faith; that good husbands and good wives and respectable members of society will not be easily condemned by a God of mercy; and that without the aid of the sacraments a perfect act of contri tion will free them from sin and prepare them for heaven. This indifference to misbelief I trace to a decay of faith, and I propose to study it in the light of the Church's teaching.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.