Hooper wanted to teach the townspeople. The lesson was that nobody is perfect and every single one of us had done a sin in their life that they hide from others so they don't get judged and bothered because of it, the black veil was simply a physical representation of hiding that sin, the way people reacted to the minister black veil is hypocritical because they all know that he is trying to hide something and at the same time they all have sins that they hide themselves, yet they start judging him and try to expose him even though they don't know what he is really hiding, but that's how the humans are. The society in this story was puritan which is known to be harsh, yet it isn't much different that today's
Hooper wanted to teach the townspeople. The lesson was that nobody is perfect and every single one of us had done a sin in their life that they hide from others so they don't get judged and bothered because of it, the black veil was simply a physical representation of hiding that sin, the way people reacted to the minister black veil is hypocritical because they all know that he is trying to hide something and at the same time they all have sins that they hide themselves, yet they start judging him and try to expose him even though they don't know what he is really hiding, but that's how the humans are. The society in this story was puritan which is known to be harsh, yet it isn't much different that today's