Why God made the universe

What purpose did God have in mind in making this world? The answer is that God intended to build a moral universe. He willed from all eternity to build a stage on which characters would emerge. He might have made a world without morality, without virtue, without character. He might have made a world in which each of us would have sprouted goodness with the same necessity, for example, as that of the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. But he chose not to make that kind of a world, not to make a world in which we would be good, as fire is hot and ice is cold. He willed to make a moral universe so that by the right use of the gift of freedom characters might emerge. What does God care for in things tiled into an infinity of space even though they be diamonds?  For if all the orbits of heaven were so many jewels, glittering as the sun, what would their external but undisturbed balance mean to him in comparison with the single character which could take hold of the tangled skein of a seemingly wrecked and ruined life and weave out of them the beautiful tapestry of saintliness and holiness?