Suppose that we decide that belief in a Creative Mind is one which we can reach by reflection, but that we cannot advance by unaided reflection to the further belief that God is just or loving. Even so, our total attitude is radically changed by our belief. For, if I really believe in Creative Mind, I am confronted with a universe which is a manifestation of mind and not a dead and directionless system of atoms, or "events" or “sense data” or whatever unit happens to be in fashion. In the last analysis, I am confronted by a living universe, for mind is the highest form of life. Human minds are not strange sports of a purposeless process of evolution - they are offshoots, or reflections, or "fulgurations" of the Creative Mind. I could never reconcile myself to the idea that the mind of man is the only and the highest mind there is.

　　设若我们决定，人们对于相信一个“创始心灵”可以靠反思而得到解决，但是未得协助的反思不能让我们往前更进一步，那就是获致上帝是公正和爱恤的信念。纵使是这样，我们的整个态度将被我们的信念彻底地改变。因为，如果我真正信仰“创始心灵”，我所面对的宇宙是心灵的表现，不是由原子或者“事件”或者“感觉材料”或者其他什么时髦叫法的单元所组成的一个没有生命也没有方向的系统。归根到底，我面临的是一个活生生的宇宙，因为心灵是生命的最高尚的形式。人类的心灵不是一个没有目标的只是进化所得出的怪物——他们是“创始心灵”的分枝、反照或“闪光”。我永远无法甘愿接受，人类的心灵是唯一的而且是最崇高的心灵。
　　[ Creative Mind“创始心灵”：这个英文复合词的各个使用形式（按它们在本文出现的次序）计有：a creative Mind, a Creative Mind, Creative Mind, the Creative Mind（最后加“the”是句中需要的特殊用法），可以看出一些词语的发展过程和最后形式；原文到此，Creative Mind 就等于是God 的代用语。]

I could not claim that belief in God is always easy. No one can escape the problem of evil in its two fold form, wickedness and suffering, and certainly our belief will be shallow and unstable unless we face it. There is, so far as I know, no satisfactory solution of the problem of evil to be found in any philosophy, but it is worth while pointing out that the problem of evil is not an objection to the belief in Creative Mind, but only to the belief that that Mind recognizes values and can be described as good. It is, at first sight, a staggering blow to the conjecture and hope that God is love.

　　我不敢说，信仰上帝是容易的。恶毒和苦难是邪恶底双重面貌，没有人能避开这个问题；除非我们跟这个问题抗衡，我们的信仰一定是肤浅而动摇的。对于邪恶问题，就我所知，在任何哲学中都找不到满意的解决办法，但值得指出的是：邪恶底问题并不会阻碍我们信仰创始心灵，它只会妨害我们相信创始心灵能认识价值，可以被描写为至善。初入眼帘，这对于“上帝是爱”的臆测和期望，是一个沉重的打击。
　　[evil、wickedness：这两个英文字一般都译作“邪恶”，这里为了区别它们之间的不同，勉强在本句分别叫做“邪恶”和“恶毒”。
　　[worth while“值得”：目前通用的形式是worthwhile，老派或英式英文可能用 worth-while，本文用worth while 可以推断是更早先的一种用法。]

Here I must bring in the idea of revelation, for it is precisely at this point, where hope and despair about the nature of things meet, that we are driven to ask, is there no word of God to help our perplexity and our existential anxiety, immersed as we are in the conflict between creation and destruction, good and evil, and in a world that seems to be a flux of coming into being and passing away? Bare Theism would be to me a bleak creed and one subject to a standing limitation the insoluble problem of evil. At the same time, Theism is the foundation of all that follows, for 1 could not make sense of the idea of revelation if I did not first believe that there is a God to be revealed.

　　到这里，我得引用“启示”的观念，因为正是当我们对事物之本质感到希望和绝望交加的时候，我们不免会问：我们现在沉浸于创造与毁灭、善与恶的冲突，而且陷溺在生死轮替和变动不居的世界之中，我们是一片困惑，对生存感到忧心，难道上帝不会给与我们指示、帮助我们吗？对我而言，光秃秃的壹神论只是没有内涵的教条，而且面临无法克服的限制——不能解决邪恶问题。可是同时，壹神论却是本文在下面的申论的基础，这就是说，如果我不首先相信有一个上帝有待我们揭露，所谓揭露或启示就毫无意义可言。
　　[ Theism “一神论”：文中的这个英文字的开头字母是大写，翻译时突然想到用“一”字的繁多写法（似乎也叫大写），觉得有此需要。]

Revelation follows by a logical necessity from the belief in Creative Mind, for if that belief is true, the nature of that Mind must be disclosed, at least to some extent, in the creation. An artist reveals something of himself in every work that he creates, though it may take a very acute and sensitive critic to discern what he reveals. So it must be with the Creative Mind; He is revealed in all His works and the whole universe is a manifestation of His being. But here, of course, is the difficulty. The creation as a whole seems to speak to us in riddles, or at least in ambiguous terms. To interpret it we need some more specific and definite revelation. And this is precisely what religion historically has claimed to provide.

　　“启示”是跟随我们接受“创始心灵”后出于逻辑上的需要而来的，因为要是我们的信仰是真实的，那“心灵”必定在他创始之时有所显露，至少会显露到某种程度。艺术家总会或多或少地在他的每一件作品中显示自己，虽然他所宣泄的内容需要非常专精敏锐的大行家才能了解。唯一的创始心灵也必然是同样的；他显露在他创造的所有作品中，整个宇宙都是他的存在的表现。当然，这就面临困难之处。对于我们，整个创始就似乎用哑谜向我们表达，或者说，它是用含糊的词语跟我们说话。要解释那些话，我们需要某种比较特殊和肯定的启示。宗教历来所宣称可以提供的，正好就是这些。

I cannot agree with those eminent Christian theologians, such as Karl Barth, who would exclude all revelation, except the Hebrew and Christian, from consideration. Though I hold that in Christ we have the supreme and, in a sense, final revelation of God, I believe that "broken lights" have shone in all the great religions of the world and in men who have had no religious allegiance. To pursue the topic of what we may call perhaps "diffused" revelation would upset the balance of this essay, but 1 want to make it plain that I believe the Logos or Wisdom of God has inspired many prophets and mystics who have no place in the canon of our Scriptures.

　　有些著名的基督教神学家，例如卡尔.巴世，只接受希伯来和基督教的启示，其他启示一概不予考虑，我无法同意他们。虽然我坚信在基督中我们获得上帝所显露之最崇高的、也可说是决定性的启示，我认为世界上所有伟大的宗教，以及一些无宗教信仰的人，同样照射出“断断续续的启示之光”。这类的光，我们或许可以称之为“扩散的”启示；要讨论这一问题，势将打乱本文结构上的平衡，但是，我想要说明白的是，我相信在我们经典上没有地位的许多先知和神奇人物，上帝的道理或智慧曾经同样地启发他们。 （十之四完）