In the judgment of the author of the following treatise, the time has now arrived when the questions at issue between Theism on the one hand, and the various forms of Antitheism on the other, may be permanently settled, and that upon scientific grounds. All these questions now, in reality, stand out before the world in visible dependence upon a single issue, the validity of the human Intelligence as a faculty of world-knowledge. Antitheism, in all its forms, has openly based itself upon the assumption, and this is its final stronghold, that all our world-knowledge, subjective and objective, is exclusively phenomenal, mere appearance, in which no reality of any kind appears; and that, consequently, "the reality existing behind all appearances is, and ever must be, unknown." The fact is also being "known and read of all men," that, this principle being admitted, all questions in regard to causation, proximate or ultimate, are undeniably at an end. "What can we reason but from what we know?" Equally manifest to all sober thinkers has the fact become, that if it be granted that we have a valid knowledge of "the things that are made," the proposition is undeniable that we have an equally valid knowledge of the being and perfections of a personal God, "the Creator of the heavens and the earth.
A fundamental aim of the author of this treatise has been not only to subvert utterly the antitheistic philosophy in all its actual and possible forms, and to verify for Theism an immovable foundation; but, also to bring out into distinct isolation the real theistic problem and syllogism in all its varied forms, so that the argument throughout may be seen to be, and to have been, conducted upon truly scientific principles. With these suggestions, the work is commended to the most rigid scrutiny of the friends of truth.
ASA MAHAN (1799-1889) was America's foremost Christian educator, reformer, philosopher, and pastor. He was founding president of two colleges and one university, where he was able to inspire numerous reforms, publish authoritative philosophical texts, and promote powerful revivals like his close associate Charles Finney. He led the way on all important fronts while being severely persecuted. He introduced the new curriculum later adopted by Harvard, was the first to instruct and grant liberal college degrees to white and colored women, advised Lincoln during the Civil War, and among many other remarkable achievements, was a father to the early evangelical and holiness movements.
