WG-00.3-PUBLISHERS’ NOTE

PUBLISHERS’ NOTE The Author of this volume, an American lawyer, was for upwards of twenty years a convinced and avowed materialist. His mental and professional training, therefore, lends lucidity and force to his arguments, which will appeal the more readily to honest minds and sincere seekers of the truth.

PREFACE The purpose of this volume is to make an application of the philosophic or rationalistic test to the Bible account of Creation, and particularly to that portion of the account which deals with the Origin of Evil in human nature.

There is room just now for an application of this test, because of the collapse of the Darwinian theory of the Origin of Species. That theory, which was the central doctrine of the philosophy of Materialism, had so completely occupied the stage, that its exit leaves a most conspicuous vacancy. If evil (in its infinite variety of mani­festations) be not a primal condition out of which man is evolving, and which the human race is gradually leaving behind, as Materialism taught, what is it? If we reject Materialism, as the successors of its now deceased apostles are doing, what shall take its place?

Here are patent facts—the most conspicuous matters of daily observation—viz., the distressing facts of human delinquencies and sufferings. It is not endurable that we should have no explanation of them; and Materialism, while it lasted, sufficed at least to prevent a painful void. In what direction then shall we turn to find a resting- place for our inquiring minds? In such a period of transition there will be some minds (and possibly not a few) who will be disposed to examine again (or perhaps for the first time) the explanation given by the author of Genesis, and to ascertain whether that explanation accounts for the otherwise inexplicable facts of human experience and history. To these, the following lines will afford an opportunity of making such examination, and will furnish assistance in conducting it to a sound conclusion.

Readers who are accustomed to philosophic discussions will find themselves in a familiar path so far as relates to the method employed herein; at the same time there is no attempt at profundity, and no arguments or reasonings are presented which the simple-minded and philosophic reader cannot readily grasp. The volume is written from the present stand­point of one who, after having been for upwards of twenty years an implicit believer in the main doctrines of Materialism, has come to the un­qualified acceptance of the first three chapters (and of all the other chapters) of Genesis, as a literal and accurate description of historic events. The author has spoken of the passing of Materialism, and particularly of the collapse of the Darwinian theory, as the striking present-day movement of philosophic thought. It is, indeed, common to hear those who fancy themselves to be talking learnedly speak of these things as if they were still—as they were a decade ago—the almost unquestioned teachings of “science.” But these (many of them, sad to say, now occupants of pulpits in Christian churches) are but merely echoing in this generation the always unproved and now properly rejected speculations of a dead and gone generation of infidel philosophers.