These are the sins which make
men silent, cunning, dark, sour, double-tongued, afraid to look
anyone full in the face, unwilling to make friends, afraid of opening
their minds to anyone, because they have something on their minds
which they dare not tell their neighbours, which they dare not even
tell themselves, but think about as little as they can help. Do you
not know what I mean? Do you not often see it in others? Have you
never felt it in yourselves when you have done wrong, that dark
feeling within which shows itself in dark looks? You talk of a
"dark-looking man," or a "dark sort of person;" and you mean, do you
not, a man whom you cannot make out, who does not wish you to make
him out; who keeps his thoughts and his feelings to himself, and is
never frank or free, except with bad companions, when the world
cannot see him; who goes about hanging down his head, and looking out
of the corners of his eyes, as if he were afraid of the very
sunshine--afraid of the light. We know that such a man has something
dark on his mind. We call him a "dark sort of man." And we are
right. We say of him what St. Paul says of him in this very epistle,
when he says, that sin is darkness, and sinful works the deeds of
darkness; and that goodness, and righteousness, and truth, are light,
the very light of God and the Spirit of God.
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