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Assuming this experience to have been a dream, analyze the psychological message coming from G.B's unconsious mind.

If the experience of Goodman Brown is a dream, it expresses  unconscious doubts about his own goodness and that of the Puritans.  At the end of the story he is buried with "no hopeful verse upon his tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom."  This last description hints at the innate darkness in the soul of the man.

This darkness is suggested early in the story when Goodman encounters the old man by an old tree, who remarks that Goodman is late.  "Faith kept me back awhile," Brown explains.  This double entendre on the wife's name suggests that Goodman's bride detains him while his faith in goodness deters him in his decision to see what goes on in the forest. And as Goodman proceeds, he spies Faith, "with the pink ribbons...But [he] looked sternly and sadly into her face, and passed on...."  After encountering Faith a second time and passing on, Goodman Brown becomes a sad, a darkly mediatative, a distrustful...man." 

Hawthorne hints that the experience of losing Faith in the forest (another double entendre) causes Goodman to become horrified, and he feels "a loathful brotherhood by the sympahy of all that was wicked in his heart," sensing the affinity in him with the other evil souls.  Because he loses faith, Goodman Brown allows the "mysteries of sin" to enter his heart, and , thus, change his perspective, becoming "A stern, a sad,...if not a desperate man..."