Flaws in gems.
Ideal heroes are not plentiful, and there are few gems that don’t need rich setting.
Impossibility of evading trouble.
People who hate trouble generally get a good deal of it. It’s all very well for a gentle, acquiescent spirit to be carried through life by one bearer. But when half a dozen bearers quarrel and insist on carrying one opposite ways, the more facile the spirit, the greater the trouble.
Righteousness through repentance.
Perhaps there is never a time when man or woman has a better chance, with suitable help, of building a good character, than just after a humiliating fall which has taught the sinner his own weakness, and given him a sad experience of the bitterness of sin.
Nobody wants to be sold under sin, and go the whole length in iniquity; and when one has gone just far enough in wrong living to perceive in advance all its pains and penalties, there is often an agonized effort to get back to respectability, like the clutching of the drowning man for the shore. The waters of death are cold and bitter, and nobody wants to be drowned.