But some may say, wicked men are very wise; although they rebel against God’s Spirit, and do not even believe in God’s Spirit, but say that man’s mind can find out everything for itself, without God’s help, yet they are very wise. Are they? The Bible tells us again and again that the wisdom of such men is folly; that God takes such wise men in their own craftiness. And the Bible speaks truth. If there is one thing of which I am more certain than another, my friends, it is that, just in proportion as a man is bad, just in proportion as he does not believe in a good Spirit of God who wills to teach him, and gives him light, he is a fool. If there is one thing more than another which such men’s books have taught me, it is that they are in darkness, when they fancy they are in the brightest light; that they make the greatest mistakes when they intend to say the cleverest things; and when they least fancy it, fall into nonsense and absurdities, not merely on matters of religion, but on points which they profess to have studied, and in cases where, by their own showing, they ought to have known better. But our business is rather with ourselves. Our business, in this time of Lent, is to see whether we have been shutting our eyes; whether we have been walking in darkness, while God’s light is all around us. And how shall we know that? Let St. John tell us: “He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness until now, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because darkness has blinded his eyes.” Hating our brother. Covetousness, which is indeed hating our brother, for it teaches us to prefer our good to our neighbour’s good, to fatten ourselves at our neighbour’s expense, to get his work, his custom, his money, away from him to ourselves; bigotry, which makes men hate and despise those who differ from them in religion; spite and malice against those who have injured us; suspicions and dark distrust of our neighbours, and of mankind in general; selfishness, which sets us always standing on our own rights, makes us always ready to take offence, always ready to think that people mean to insult us or injure us, and makes us moody, dark, peevish, always thinking about ourselves, and our plans, or our own pleasures, shut up as it were within ourselves—all these sins, in proportion as anyone gives way to them, darken the eyes of a man’s soul. They really and actually make him more stupid, less able to understand his neighbours’ hearts and minds, less able to take a reasonable view of any matter or question whatsoever. You may not believe me. But so it is. I know it by experience to be true. I warn you that you will find it true one day; that all spite, passion, prejudice, suspicion, hard judgments, contempt, self-conceit, blind a man’s reason, and heart, and soul, and make him stumble and fall into mistakes, even in worldly matters, just as surely as shutting our eyes makes us stumble in broad daylight.