Why Spiritual Teaching Bears No Fruit

But it is certain that the teaching of spiritual things fails for two reasons. Either the teacher is recommending what he has no experience of, and is trying to instruct his hearer with empty-sounding words; or else the hearer is a bad man, full of faults, who cannot receive in his hard heart the holy and saving teaching of the spiritual man. Of such people the prophet says: “For the heart of this people is blinded, and their ears are dull of hearing, and they have closed their eyes, so that they may not at any time see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn, and I heal them.” [a]