The moral aim of the tale has been to depict the mental difficulties which our heathen forefathers had severally to encounter ere they could embrace Christianity--difficulties chiefly arising from the inconsistencies of Christians--and to set forth the example of one who, having found the "pearl of great price," sold all he had and bought it, forsaking all that could appeal to the imagination of a warlike youth--"choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season."