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.
How can the bigot repent? for to repent means to turn from wrong to
right; and he has lost the very notion of right and wrong, in the
midst of all his religion and his fine doctrines. He fancies that
right does not mean love, mercy, goodness, patience, but notions like
his own; and that wrong does not mean hatred, and evil-speaking, and
suspicion, and uncharitableness, and slander, and lying, but notions
unlike his own.
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