Editorial note — LESSON V.
Reading edition
[Footnote A: Doc. and Cov., Sec. i:31. Also Habakkuk i:13 and Psalms v:4-6.]
[Footnote B: "We cry out for some explanation—for some philosophy which shall show us how evil is consistent with the infinite goodness." (Le Conte, "Conceptions of God," p. 71.)]
[Footnote C: "How terribly large is the proportion of evil? comparing the number of those who are or have been happy, with the number of those who are or have been unhappy, can we say that the great pessimist was very far wrong in calling this the worst possible—he did not say the worst conceivable—world". (Goldwin Smith, discussing "Evolution, Immortality, and Christianity," in North American Review, October, 1907, p. 196.)]
[Footnote D: "The great quest of humanity is happiness. But was the world created to make us happy? I've studied people in all places and conditions and everywhere I've found, when you get below the surface, that it's mostly the insincere individual who says, 'I am a happy man.'" (Thomas A. Edison, the great American Inventor in a Vienna-Austria Interview on "Success in Life," reported in New York World, October 25. 1911.)]
[Footnote E: Habakkuk i:13.]
[Footnote F: See Seventy's Year Book II, Lessons III and IX. Also Year Book IV, Lessons IV and VII and VIII.]
[Footnote G: In order that it may be seen that this is regarded really as doubtful by some powerful minds, and also as a question of grave importance, I quote the following presentation of it by Professor Howison, and which he prints in italics in the work from which I quote it: "Can the reality of human free-agency, of moral responsibility and universal moral aspiration, of unlimited spiritual hope for every soul,—can this be made out, can it even be held, consistently with the theory of an Immanent God? This, for a few awakened minds at least, now becomes the 'burning question.' * * * At all events, the time has come when the question whether this is not so should be raised with all emphasis, and examined to the end. For if our genuine freedom is to disappear when we accept the religion whose God is the Immanent Spirit, then the new religion is in truth a decline from the highest conceptions of the historic faith, and in this regard has no advantage over the religion of the 'Unknowable.'" ("Conceptions of God," p. 30.)]