CHAPTER XXV.
HOW FAITH MAY BE LOST.

IT is part of our belief that no man can lose his faith without mortal
sin. The conscious rejection of all or any religious truth once
embraced and forming a part of Christian belief, or the deliberate
questioning of a single article thereof, is a sin, a sin against God's
light and God's grace. It is a deliberate turning away from God. The
moral culpability of such an act is great in the extreme, while its
consequences cannot be weighed or measured by any human norm or rule.

No faith was ever wrecked in a day; it takes time to come to such a
pass; it is by easy stages of infidelity, by a slow process of
half-denials, a constant fostering of habits of ignorance, that one
undermines, little by little, one's spiritual constitution. Taking
advantage of this state of debility, the microbe of unbelief creeps in,
eats its way to the soul and finally sucks out the very vitals of
faith. Nor is this growth of evil an unconscious one; and there lies
the malice and guilt. Ignorant pride, neglect of prayer and religious
worship, disorders, etc., these are evils the culprit knows of and
wills. He cannot help feeling the ravages being wrought in his soul; he
cannot help knowing that these are deadly perils to his treasure of
faith. He complacently allows them to run their course; and he wakes up
one fine morning to find his faith gone, lost, dead--and a chasm
yawning between him and his God that only a miracle can bridge over.

We mentioned ignorance: this it is that attacks the underpinning of
faith, its rational basis, by which it is made intelligent and