This latter knowledge is bound to be as far as possible emptied of personal elements. But our knowledge is nothing if not personal: it is the knowledge which issues, and issues only, out of the personal contact of life with life. And this is why it can afford to anticipate the future. For a person is a consistent and integral whole: if you know it at any one point, you know it in a sense at all points. The one character, the one will, disclose themselves through every partial expression, and passing gesture, and varying act. Therefore it is that, when two personalities draw towards one another in the touch of love, they can afford to plight their word. For love is the instinctive prophecy of a future adherence. It is the assurance, passing from soul to soul, that no new discovery of what is involved in their after-life together can ever deny, or defeat, or destroy their present mutual coherence in each other. That adhesion, that adaptability, which has been proved at a few points, will necessarily be justified throughout. The marriage-pledge expresses the absolute conviction that the present experience is irreversible, except by wilful sin. Whatever novelties the years bring with them, those two characters will abide what they are to-day. Growth cannot radically alter them.
Love, then, is this confident anticipation, which takes the future in pledge. And where this anticipation breaks down, it must be through human infirmity, wrong, misunderstanding.
And our knowledge of Christ is this knowledge of love; wherever it exists, and so far as it exists, it issues out of personal contact, personal inter-action. This is why, in its tested and certified form, i.e. in the accumulated and historic experience of the Catholic community, it can rationally justify its anticipation of an unbroken adherence.
And it can do so with complete confidence, because, here, on the side of Christ, there is no infirmity which can endanger the plighted faith: there is no lapse, no decline possible. Christ must be loyal, for He is sinless. And more: being sinless, He is consistent. Every part of Him is in harmony with the whole: in Him there is no unsteadiness, no insecurity. Such a flawless character is identical with itself: wherever it is touched, it can be tested and approved.
What, then, can upset our trust in Him? What can disturb our knowledge of Him? What fear of change can the years bring on? We may know but a tiny fragment, a fringe of this love of His to us, yet that is enough: to have felt it at all is to trust it for ever. We cannot hesitate to commit ourselves to One Who, if we know Him in any way, is known to be, by inward, personal, inherent necessity, the 'same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.'
Yes!—but still it may be pleaded, that this anticipatory adherence, which might justifiably be given to a person beloved, cannot be pledged to dogmatic definitions. These, at any rate, are matters not of love, but of reason: they must be liable to critical examination, to intellectual revision. It is the pledge given to believe these dogmas in the future, which is such an outrage on intellectual morality.
Now, this protest, forcible and obvious as it looks at first sight, is still guilty of confusing the criticism which belongs to one province of knowledge with that which belongs to another. These dogmas of faith do not the least correspond to the classifications and laws of physical science; and for this reason, that the matter to which they relate is wholly different in kind. Dogmas represent reason in its application to a personal life: scientific generalisations represent reason as applied to matter, from which the conditions of personality have been rigorously and rightly excluded. The difference is vital; and it affects the entire character of the working of reason.
The dogmatic definitions of Christian theology can never be divorced from their contact in the personality of Christ. They are statements concerning a living character. As such, and only as such, do they come within the lines of faith. We do not, in the strict sense, believe in them: for belief is never a purely intellectual act; it is a movement of the living man drawn towards a living person. Belief can only be in Jesus Christ. To Him alone do we ever commit ourselves, surrender ourselves, for ever and aye. But a personality, though its roots lie deeper than reason, yet includes reason within its compass: a personality cannot but be rational, though it be more than merely rational; it has in it a rational ground, a rational construction; it could not be what it is without being of such and such a fixed and organic character. And a personality, therefore, is intelligible; it lays itself open to rational treatment; its characteristics can be stated in terms of thought. The Will of God is the Word of God; the Life is also the Light. That which is loved can be apprehended; that which is felt can be named. So the Personality of the Word admits of being rationally expressed in the sense that reason can name and distinguish those elements in it, which constitute its enduring and essential conditions. The dogmas now in question, are simply careful rehearsals of those inherent necessities which, inevitably, are involved in the rational construction of Christ's living character. They are statements of what He must be, if He is what our hearts assure us; if He can do that for which our wills tender Him their lifelong self-surrender. Unless these rational conditions stand, then, no act of faith is justifiable; unless His personality correspond to these assertions, we can never be authorised in worshipping Him.
But, if so, then we can commit ourselves to these dogmas in the same way, and degree, as we commit ourselves to Him. We can do so, in the absolute assurance that He cannot but abide for ever, that which we know Him to be to-day. We know Him indeed, but 'in part:' but it is part of a fixed and integral character, which is whole in every part; and can never falsify, in the future, the revelation which it has already made of itself.
The real question, as to Christian dogma, lies in the prior question—Is Christianity justified in claiming to have reached a final position? If the position is rightly final, then the intellectual expression of its inherent elements is final also. Here is the deep contrast between it and science. The scientific man is forbidden, by the very nature of his studies, to assume finality for his propositions. For he is not yet in command of his material. Far, very far, from it. He is touching it on its very edge. He is engaged in slowly pushing tentative advances into an unknown world, looming, vast, dim, manifold, beyond his frontier of light. The coherence of his known matter with that huge mass beyond his ken, can be but faintly imaged and suspected. Wholly unreckoned forces are in operation. At any moment he may be called upon to throw over the classification which sums up his hitherto experience; he may have to adopt a new centre; to bring his facts into a novel focus; and this involves at once a novel principle of arrangement. In such conditions dogma is, of course, an absurdity. But, if we are in a position to have any faith in Jesus Christ, then we must suppose that we have arrived at the one centre to all possible experiences, the one focus, under which all sights must fall. To believe in Him at all is to believe that, by and in 'this Man, will God judge the world.' In His personality, in His character, we are in possession of the ultimate principle, under which the final estimate of all things will be taken. We have given us, in His sacrifice and mission, the absolute rule, standard, test, right to the very end. Nothing can fall outside it. In Him, God has summed up creation. We have touched, in Him, the 'last days,' the ultimate stage of all development. We cannot believe in Him at all, and not believe that His message is final.