sparkling beauty of these words, let us pause
at this definite idea: The Eternal, the first universal Cause of all
things, independently of which nothing exists, could only create under
the impelling motive of the goodness which gives, and not of the love
which seeks requital. This proposition is as clear in the abstract as
any theorem of geometry. But we have touched the threshold of the
infinite; and we never touch the threshold of the infinite without
falling into some degree of bewilderment. Clear as this thought is in
the abstract, if we wish to analyze it in its real substance, our view
is confused. You understand well that goodness increases in the
proportion in which its object is diminished. We are by so much more
good as we stoop to that which is poorer and more miserable. What then
shall be the infinite goodness? In order to find it, we must infinitely
diminish its object: and here we encounter mystery. To diminish an
object infinitely is an operation impossible to our thought. This
mystery is encountered even in the mathematical sciences. We take a
quantity, halve it, and again halve this half, and so on without end,
but we shall never obtain the infinity of smallness; for the quantity
indefinitely divided will always remain indefinitely divisible. At
whatever degree of division we may have arrived, between what remains
and nothingness there extends always the abyss of the infinite. So I
seek for the object of infinite goodness: that object must be infinitely
destitute. I diminish accordingly the existence of the universe: I
extinguish all the rays of its beauty; I take from it order, life,
measure, color, light; I reduce it until it is nothing but formless
matter, a something--I know not what--which has no longer a name. Vain
attempt! This nameless something, so long as it is anything, will not be
_nothing_. Between it and nothing there will always be the infinite. If
the goodness of God is applied to any object which was existing
independently of Him, however poor and abject that object be conceived
to have been, then God is no longer the unique, the absolute Creator. If
imagination will cross the abyss, we shall come of necessity to
say--what? that the object of infinite love must have been
non-existence. This is what the orator already quoted has done:--"All
perfection supposes an object to which to apply itself. The divine
goodness therefore requires an object as vast and profound as itself.
God discover