In one word, then, the sin of these Pharisees, the unpardonable sin, which ruins all who give themselves up to it, was bigotry; calling right wrong, because it did not suit their party prejudices to call it right. They were fancying themselves very religious and pious, and all the while they did not know right when they saw it; and when the Lord came doing right, they called it wrong, because He did not agree with their doctrines. They fancied they were the only people on earth who knew how to worship God perfectly; and yet while they pretended to worship Him, they did not know what He was like. The Lord Jesus came down, the perfect likeness of God’s glory, and the express pattern of His character, helping, and healing, and delivering the souls and bodies of all poor wretches whom He met; and these Pharisees could not see God’s Spirit in that; and because it was certainly not their own spirit, called it the spirit of a devil, and blasphemed against the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Right and Love. This was bigotry, the flower and crown of all sins into which man can fall; the worst of all sins, because a man may keep from every other sin with all his might and main, as the Pharisees did, and yet be led by bigotry into almost every one of them without knowing it; into harsh and uncharitable judgment; into anger, clamour, and railing; into misrepresentation and slander; and fancying that the God of truth needs the help of their lying; perhaps, as has often happened, alas! already, into devilish cruelty to the souls and bodies of men. The worst of all sins; because a man who has given up his heart to bigotry can have no forgiveness. He cannot; for how can a man be forgiven unless he repent? and how can a bigot repent? how can he confess himself in the wrong, while he fancies himself infallibly in the right? As the Lord said to these very Pharisees: “If ye had been blind, ye had had no sin: but now ye say We see; therefore your sin remaineth.” How can the bigot repent? for repenting is turning to God; and how can a man turn to God who does not know where to look for God, who does not know who God is, who mistakes the devil for God, and fancies the all-loving Father to be a taskmaster, and a tyrant, and an accuser, and a respecter of persons, without mercy or care for ninety-nine hundredths of the souls which He has made? How can he find God? He does not know whom to look for.