How does weakness show God's power?

Suppose God had made man perfect in the beginning and avoided for him all this effort and stumbling—

He would have simply been such a thing as God made him—nothing more—no virtue in himself—no possibility of ever becoming greater than the thing, which he was at first created. 

But God endowed man a living soul—endowed him the offspring of His own undying spirit!—endowed him, too, with all the possibilities necessary to develop to a comprehension of himself. 

Made him spiritually in His own image in that He gave him personal freedom and free will and the inherent power of evolution outwardly from His own individual life-germ. 

He shows all the merciful tenderness of a watchful and loving parent in the revelations—the continual light that He sheds downward through every grade of spiritual life to help him onward. 

The higher spirits develop toward God the more they turn backwards to shed the light, which they have received.