is made for the spiritual beings to which it offers the condition of their life and development; spiritual beings are made for felicity.  The moving spring of infinite power is goodness:  this is my thesis.  If I succeed in establishing it, it will follow that we shall in imagination see issuing from the supreme unity of the Infinite Being three rays:  the power which creates the being of things; the intelligence which orders them; and the love which conducts them to their destination.  It will also follow that I shall have justified the title under which these Lectures were announced:  Power and wisdom are attributes of the Creator; the Father reveals Himself in goodness.

What shall be our method?  Can we enter into the counsels of God?  By what means?  To place our understanding in the midst of the Divine consciousness, there to behold the spring of the determinations of the Infinite Being, were an attempt so far exceeding our capacity, that it is impossible to point out any means whatever by which it could be made.  This would be to conceive of God in His eternal essence, independently of His relation to the universe, to nature, and to our reason.  I do not say merely that the attempt would be fruitless; I say that we have no means of attempting this metaphysical adventure.  But might we not, in looking at the work of God, discern in it the evidence of its design?  This is a process which we often follow in regard to our fellow-creatures.  Do we wish to know the object which a man has in view in his labor?  He may himself disclose that object to us directly in words, or we may endeavor to discover it.  We watch him at work, and by observing the way in which he proceeds we sometimes come to know what his thoughts are, because we find ourselves in presence of the work of a mind, and we ourselves are mind.  Can we in the same way, by looking at the universe, that grand work, succeed in discovering its end?

The way on which we are entering raises two objections, which proceed from the difficulties felt by two classes of men of opposite views; and our first business will be to rid ourselves of these preliminary difficulties.

You will never succeed, it has been said to me, in proving the goodness of God, because evil is in the world.  I am not inventing, Gentlemen.  A letter containing this challenge has been addressed to me by one of you.  It is manifest, since we propose to ourselves to recognize in the work the intention of the Worker, and since our thesis is the goodness of the First Cause of the universe, that evil, in all its forms, sin, pain, imperfection, is the main objection which can be addressed to us.  Evil is real; it is a sad and great reality; I am forward to acknowledge it.  Any system which would prove that evil does not exist, or, which comes to the same thing, that evil is necessary, that good and evil in short are of the same nature, is an impossible, I had almost said a culpable, system.  The strongest