The World and its God by Phillip Mauro and published by Classics.
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.
