APPENDIX: AFFLICTION; AGENCY, DIVINE AND HUMAN; ARCHAEOLOGY ｜ 附录：苦难・神人二者的作为・考古学

ENAFFLICTION. [To all, sooner or later, Christ comes to baptize them with fire. With many—and those, perhaps, the best people—it goes on month after month and year after year. By secret trials, by chastenings which none but they and God can understand, the Lord is cleansing them from their faults and making them to understand wisdom secretly, burning out of them the chaff of self-will and self-conceit and vanity, and leaving only the pure gold of righteousness. How many sweet, holy souls, who look cheerful enough before the eyes of man, yet have their secret sorrows! They carry their cross unseen all day long, and lie down to sleep on it at night; and they will carry it, perhaps, for years and years, and to their graves, and to the throne of Christ, before they lay it down. And none but they and Christ will ever know what it was—what was the secret chastisement which God sent to make that soul better, which seemed to us already too good for earth. Charles Kingsley.]

BSBJob 23:10 Yet He knows the way I have taken; when He has tested me, I will come forth as gold.

中苦难。〔基督迟早会临到每一个人，用火给他们施洗。对许多人——也许正是最好的那些人——这火要一月又一月、一年又一年地烧下去。藉着隐秘的试炼，藉着除他们自己与神之外无人能懂的管教，主正在洁净他们脱离自身的过失，暗中使他们明白智慧，把自我意志、自负与虚荣的糠秕从他们里面烧尽，只留下公义的精金。有多少甘美圣洁的灵魂，在人眼前看去够开朗的了，心里却有他们隐秘的忧伤！他们整日背着无人看见的十字架，夜里就枕着它睡下；他们也许要这样背上许多许多年，背到坟墓里去，背到基督的宝座前，才放下它。除了他们自己与基督，永远不会有人知道那是什么——神究竟降下了怎样一场隐秘的管教，为要使那个在我们看来早已好得不该属这地上的灵魂变得更好。查尔斯·金斯莱（Charles Kingsley）〕

ENAGENCY, DIVINE AND HUMAN. A careful and exhaustive study of the texts and points presented upon the pages referred to can hardly fail to remove all real practical difficulties touching the seemingly irreconcilable facts of Divine sovereignty and human freedom. The Bible neither directly presents, nor does it attempt to harmonize, the related and combined action of God and man: it simply ignores the question of difficulties. By throwing an impenetrable veil over this question, it puts it out of the sphere of reasonable consideration, and so removes it from the list of possible perplexities and doubts for every right-minded believer. Only curious and speculative thinking has raised and interminably discussed these questions—to no spiritual profit, and without any conclusive or advantageous result. On the one hand, the Bible claims for God an absolute sovereignty over all being and events. On the other, it recognizes and affirms man's freedom, by its direct and oft-repeated demand that this freedom itself be faithfully exercised in meeting and fulfilling, to the utmost of his ability and endeavor, all the righteous purposes and gracious provisions of the sovereign God in redeeming, sanctifying and saving men. And in vital conjunction with this demand, the Book of God assures the compliant, fervent, believing man that the sovereign power and grace of God are engaged to second and to secure the promised blessed result.

BSBPhilippians 2:12 Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence, but now even more in my absence, continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

中神与人二者的作为。只要把所引各页上的经文与要点作一番仔细而彻底的研读，几乎必能除去一切真正实际的难处——就是关于『神的主权』与『人的自由』这两件看似无法调和之事实的难处。圣经既没有直接陈述、也没有试图调和神与人这两种相关而并行的作为：它干脆把『有何难处』这个问题置之不理。它在这个问题上垂下一道无法穿透的幔子，从而把它移出合理思辨的范围，也就把它从每一个心思端正之信徒可能有的困惑与疑虑清单上除去了。惟有好奇而思辨的心思，才把这些问题提出来、没完没了地讨论——于灵性毫无益处，也得不出任何确定或有用的结果。一方面，圣经宣称神对一切存在与一切事件拥有绝对的主权。另一方面，它承认并肯定人的自由——因为它一再直接地要求：人要忠心地运用这自由本身，竭尽自己的能力与努力，去迎合、去成全那位有主权之神在救赎人、使人成圣、拯救人上的一切公义旨意与恩慈安排。而与这一要求紧密相连的是：神的书向那顺从的、火热的、相信的人保证：神主权的能力与恩典必定出手相助，成全那所应许的蒙福结果。

ENARCHAEOLOGY. [The excavator and the decipherer of ancient inscriptions have united to restore a history of the past which had seemed lost forever, and some of the results of this restoration are startling in the extreme. We are beginning to discover that civilization, at all events in the East, is very old, and that the world of Abraham was a world that was highly literary, and already had behind it a long civilized past. It is mainly from the cuneiform inscriptions of Babylonia that the light has come. Babylonia was the China of the old Oriental world: it was a land where writing and reading had been practised for unnumbered centuries, and whence the elements of culture had been disseminated throughout Western Asia. Its cities contained libraries stored with clay books, and the exploring expeditions which have been sent from Europe and America have made us acquainted with some of them. Two such libraries, which were formed before Abraham was born, have been discovered within the last half-dozen years: one of them by the French explorer, M. de Sarzec, at Tello in Southern Babylonia; the other—and the more important, though only fragments of it have been preserved—by Mr. Haynes, working in behalf of the University of Pennsylvania at Niffer, the ancient Nippur, in the northern part of the country. Some idea may be formed of the extent of these libraries, and at the same time of the materials that are being accumulated for the historian, from the fact that the number of tablets found at Tello is estimated at 33,000, while those discovered at Niffer reach an almost equally high figure. A. H. Sayce.]

BSBGenesis 11:31 And Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai the wife of Abram, and they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans for the land of Canaan. But when they arrived in Haran, they settled there.

中考古学。〔发掘者与古代铭文的释读者携手合作，把一段似乎永远失落的过往历史重建了出来；而这项重建的某些成果，其惊人程度无以复加。我们开始发现：文明——至少在东方——极其古老；亚伯拉罕所处的世界，是一个高度文字化的世界，其身后早已有一段漫长的文明历史。这道亮光主要来自巴比伦的楔形文字铭文。巴比伦是古代东方世界的中国：在那片土地上，读与写已经实行了无从计数的世纪，文化的种种要素也由此播散到整个西亚。它的城市中藏有以泥版为书的图书馆；由欧洲与美洲派出的考察队，已经使我们认识了其中的几处。近六年内已发现两座这样的图书馆，它们的建成都早于亚伯拉罕的出生：其一由法国探险家德萨泽克（M. de Sarzec）在南巴比伦的泰罗（Tello）发现；另一座更为重要（虽然只保存下残片），由海因斯（Haynes）先生代表宾夕法尼亚大学在该国北部的尼费尔（Niffer，即古代的尼普尔 Nippur）发现。若要对这些图书馆的规模、同时也对正在为历史学家积累的材料略有概念，只需看这一事实：在泰罗发现的泥版据估计有三万三千块，而在尼费尔发现的数目也几乎与之相当。赛斯（A. H. Sayce）〕