Oberlin, the illustrious pastor of the Ban de la Roche, used the
following figure in comforting the sorrow of an afflicted lady:
Dear madam, I have now before me two stones; they are alike in
color, they are of the same water, clear, pure and clean. But
there is a great difference between them; one has a dazzling
brightness, the other is quite dull. What is the reason of this
difference? The one has been carefully cut, the other hardly
touched. Now, had these stones been endowed with life, so as to
have been capable of feeling what they underwent, the one which
had received eighty cuts would have thought itself very unhappy,
and would have envied the fate of the other, which, having
received but eight, had undergone but a tenth part of its own
sufferings. Yet the stone which had suffered little is dim and
lusterless; the stone which has suffered greatly shines forth in
dazzling brilliancy.
(3097)