For my part, I hold that the great doctrines of the faith are attempts to embody in ideas, symbols and words, permanent spiritual realities, but they all need to be thought out again in the light of modern knowledge and restated in terms which are intelligible to modern men. One of our failures is that we have not believed sufficiently in the Holy Spirit, who is active in the Church, to face this task resolutely and hopefully.

　　我个人认为，伟大的教义都致力于能够涵盖某些观念、符号和文字、永恒的精神上的实在，但是那些教义都必须根据现代知识重新评估，并且用现代人能够明白的词语复述。圣灵在教会中是活跃的，我们的诸多失败之一是，我们对圣灵的信心并不足够，不足以让我们能够坚决地、充满希望地面对这一现代化的工作。

I am a modern man, and I share with most of my contemporaries an initial inhibition to hearing the gospel effectively. The gospel is a message of redemption and forgiveness of sin, but we are not conscious of our need. We may indeed be discontented with ourselves and feel there is something missing in us, or something wrong, but we do not connect this unease with sin. Thus the gospel easily appears to us irrelevant. We recognize that the world abounds in unhappy and "maladjusted" individuals, but not that we are "miserable sinners". The chief reason for this is the fading of living faith in God, for there is no sense in talking of "sin" unless we are thinking in terms of our relation with God. When, however, I come to an appreciation of the significance of my belief in Him and belief becomes an apprehended reality, I find myself in the presence of the Holy One, the absolute Good, who has created me to be His child and I am aware of my true condition; I am indeed maladjusted not to my social environment, but to the ultimate Reality.

我是现代人，我跟我同时代的大多数人一样，经历过开始时未能有效地聆听福音的抑制。基督教的福音是赎罪和赦免罪孽的信息，但是我们并未感觉到自己有那样的需要。我们可能的确对自己不满足，觉得自己缺乏什么，或是犯过什么错，但是我们没有把这种不平静与罪孽联系在一起。于是，福音很容易看来跟我们无关。我们觉察到世界充满着各类不快乐的、“不能适应”的个人，但没有想到我们都是“可怜的孽徒”。其主要原因是我们在生活中对上主的信心的消退，除非接受上主跟我们的关系，否则谈论“罪孽”就没有意义。但是，当我领悟到信仰上主的重要性，信仰变成为一个明白的实在，我就发现自己有至善和至圣的上主为伴，是他创造我成为他的孩子，我了解自己的真实状况；我确实不能适应的并不是我的社会环境，而是不能适应至上的“实在”。

[sin“罪孽”：个人对于sin这个字的中译，留在心中已经多年，思来想去，怎么都觉得“罪孽”是截至当前比较稳妥的译词，否则就要像一般词典诠释为“宗教或道德上的罪”（译为“原罪”当然也像一个词），但“罪孽、原罪”两者都有一个缺点，那就是不时需要浓缩为“罪”而用于复合词中，如“罪人”）；sin最好仿照cool翻译为“酷”的办法，把它译为“衅”(xin4)，这样，我们一方面有单音词“衅”，另外也能扩展为“罪衅（=罪孽）、衅逆（=罪人）”等双音词。（因为下一段原文将对sin 作出极为简明的诠释，因此，译者将在该处进一步讨论sin 这个字的中译问题。）
[sinner“罪人、坏人、孽徒”：“罪人”和“坏人”这两个译法都已经在中文圣经中出现，各有长短，似乎都容许再商酌；简而言之，译者认为“罪人”容易让人误解为“罪犯”，“坏人”则意义涉嫌含混，译者拟在本文启用“孽徒”作为sinner 的译词，与“罪孽/作孽”（即sin作为名词和动词的中文双音节词）匹配。]

The essential nature of sin is pride and self centredness, which separate us from God. To me it seems a fact beyond question that the reign of sin in the world is its fundamental disease. Wherever we look, we see pride and self centredness at work, producing not only manifest evils, but spoiling and frustrating even well intentioned enterprises and seeping into the fellowship of the Church itself. The hopes of a new and better world will not be achieved unless pride and self centredness can be overcome or curbed. I find the teaching of the New Testament that the new world is for new men entirely reasonable and the promise that we may be made new men in Christ, if true, the answer to a universal human problem.

　　罪孽的主要性质是傲慢和自我中心，是傲慢和自我中心把我们和上主分隔。我认为似乎毫无疑问的事实就是，罪孽主宰这个世界是这个世界的根本的疾病。不管你看哪里，我们都看到傲慢和自我中心在作祟，他们制造的不仅是明显的恶事，而且在破坏和阻挠那些存心要做的善行，甚至渗入到教会本身的组织中。除非傲慢和自我中心得能克服或遏制，一个新的和更好的世界不可能实现。新约所说新世界是给新人类的话，我发现完全是合理的，我们如果能听信在基督之中我们可以变作新人的诺言，我认为那就是人世的一个普遍问题的答案。

　　[本段开头这句英文的翻译，就需要有初步能令人接受的中文名词：“罪孽”在本句似乎还可以接受（“原罪”也同样），但如果用单音词“罪”在本句代替“罪孽”，这个句子就好像无法自圆其说。这是因为中文一向缺乏表达 sin 这个观念的专词。译者跟多个饱学博闻的虔诚基督徒交换过意见，大约是一半满足于现在的“罪”的用法（即沿用“罪”包括英文的sin和crime两个字的意义），另一半觉得有需要使用新词或专词，但又感到相沿成习，无可奈何。译者认为，只要有些人觉得有需要使用双音节的“罪孽”或单音节的“孽”来表达sin，这问题迟早总可望获得解决的。当然，译者目前最为醉心的是启用新词“衅”，这个单音词在读音上似乎最为接近sin ，而且它有一个意义是“罅隙”；说到底，sin 不过是人性中的一些缺点（请比较“七大sins” 为pride骄傲、covetousness贪婪、lust纵欲、envy妒忌、gluttony好吃、anger嗔怒、sloth怠惰）。原文作者把众多的sin简化为“骄傲”和“自我中心”两项主要性质，的确比较容易为大家接受，但若说它们是“罪”，只有把“罪”联想为“罪过”或“罪孽”时，才不至于认为“罪”的用法不妥。总之，“衅”可用于“罪衅（=罪孽）”，或者用于“犯衅（=作孽）”，或者用于“衅逆（=孽徒）。

The creative core of the Christian gospel, as I understand it, is that God is self revealing and redeeming love. He is not a remote and indifferent power or principle, but is to be thought of under the symbol of the Father who seeks His wandering children. His nature is revealed to us in a human personality and life - how else could love be revealed? and in the story of the life, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus we have the disclosure, in pictures that all can read, of the divine experience in relation to humanity and the world.

　　据我的了解，基督福音中有关创始的要旨是，上主是自我显露的、是拯救世人的爱。他不是遥远的、无动于衷的力量或本原，而是被当作寻求流浪孩子的父亲的象征。他的本质是以一个有个性的人，呈现在我们之前——爱还有其他呈现的方式吗？——在基督的生活、受难和复活的故事之中，我们拥有神跟人类和世界的经历以我们都能仔细观看的图画样式所作出的展现。

There is, I think, a more profound meaning in the Cross than is often understood. If we believe that "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself ", we have at least a partial answer to the standing difficulty of Theism - the problem of evil and suffering. It is not a theoretical solution, but it is a practical one. It is intolerable to imagine a deity contemplating the conflicts and agonies of his creatures from afar in a merely critical and detached manner, and there would be no good news about God if He were revealed only as a kind of celestial schoolmaster, or an implacable judge. The Christian belief in Incarnation and Atonement implies the belief that suffering enters into the divine experience and evil is overcome by a costly self giving of God. Thus it is possible for a human sufferer to offer his suffering, in union with Christ, as a tiny part of the redeeming process by which evil is overcome by good.

　　我认为十字架的深刻意义，比大家一般所了解的要多得多。如果我们相信“上主藉基督让世人跟他和好”，我们对于“壹神论”的老大难——邪恶和苦难的问题，至少获得部分的答案。它不是理论上的解答，而是一个实际的解决办法。认为一个神从远处只是用批评和漠然的态度，盘算着把冲突和苦痛加之于他的创造物和人类，简直是无法忍受的；要是人们对他的认识只是天庭的严师，或是毫不宽容的法官，就不会有有关上主的福音。基督教对于上主化为肉身以及赎罪的信仰，表示相信苦难已是神的部分经验，邪恶已经由上主作出代价高昂的自身施舍而予以克服。这样，世间的受难人可以配合基督献出自己的苦难，作为救赎过程的一个小部分，让至善能够克服邪恶。

It would be far from the truth if 1 suggested that the Christian doctrines are to me perfectly comprehensible. They cannot be stated in "clear and distinct ideas", because they are adumbrations of a mystery which remains a mystery in the end. And this must be so, because they are necessarily couched in human terms and in images drawn from human experience which cannot be adequate to express the reality of God. When we say that God sent His only begotten Son into the world to redeem the world, we are obviously using language which presupposes time and space and can, therefore, be only an approximation to the truth.

　　如果我说，基督教义我是完全了解的，我所说的不会是实话。基督教义不可能用“清晰明确的观念”说出来，因为它们只是一个神秘事体的轮廓，自始至终都依然是一个神秘事体。这是必然的，到底那些轮廓是用世人的语言和人们从经历得出的图像所描绘出来，而这些并不足够用来表达上主的实在。当我们说上主派遣他的独生子来拯救这个世界，我们显然是预先假定了时间和空间，因此只能是近似真理的话。 （十之七完）