THE CHINESE RECORDER
AND MISSIONARY JOURNAL.
Published Monthly by the American Presbyterian Mission Press,
18 Peking Road, Shanghai, China.
Subscription $3. 50 (Gold $1.75) per annum, postpaid.
The Religion of Intelligence.[1]
By Prof. Borden P. Bowne, LL.D.
FOR many years I have been repeating the words of the Creed, "I believe in God the Father Almighty," but I have never repeated them with such satisfaction and deep conviction as I have since I left home and have seen other nations and other races with different customs and ways of thinking. I repeat them with satisfaction for two reasons: Ist, the human problem is so great and so vast that all our human wisdom seems unable to cope with it, and only God the Father Omnipotent and Omniscient is equal to its solution. We see so short a way, our wisest statesmen, our profoundest thinkers know so little of what is to come. Meanwhile humanity is driving stormily along its perilous way, and no one can tell what the end is to be. Omens of ill can everywhere be discerned as well as bows of promise; and in this uncertainty it is great relief and comfort to fall back upon the thought of God, the Father Almighty. He has made the earth and He must guide it, and because He is the Almighty Father we may believe that the end will be good. Through the confusion, the uncertainties, the strifes, the wars, the overturnings, through graves, and ruins, and the wrecks of things He is leading our race on to higher and more abundant life.
And the second reason why I repeat the words of the Creed with such satisfaction is found in the oneness of humanity which I more clearly discern as I move around the world. After all, Chinese human nature is very like American or
- ↑ An address delivered before the Chinese Y. M. C. A., Shanghai.
