What we have seen thus far is, that if there be a moral world at all, our knowledge of nature contains nothing inconsistent with theism.

We have now to enquire how far theism is inconsistent with our conceptions of the moral world.
In treating these difficulties, we will for the present consider them as applying only to religion in general, not to any special form of it.

The position of orthodoxy we will reserve for a separate treatment.

For convenience' sake, however, I shall take as a symbol of all religion the vaguer and more general teachings of Christianity; but I shall be adducing them not as teachings revealed by heaven, but simply as developed by the religious consciousness of men.
To begin then with the great primary difficulties: these, though they take various forms, can all in the last resort be reduced to two--the existence of evil in the face of the power of God, and the freedom of man's will in the face of the will of God.

And what I shall try to make plain with respect to these is this: not that they are not difficulties--not that they are not insoluble difficulties; but that they are not difficulties due to religion or theism, nor by abandoning theism can we in any way escape from them.