However, I would like to hastily add that having sufficient faith and love in The Buddha is definitely no substitute for diligent practice towards the goal of Nibbana. Hopefully faith and love can be something to fall back on when one seems to be making very slow progress, but it should be taken in the context of all the steps that one can take towards Nibbana, i.e. sila, bhavana, panna and The Eightfold Path. Nothing should be neglected.
In addition, thank you very much in advance for your responses to my question above!