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.'