If These Things Fail To Move Us

"God's endless mercy and the kindness shown to us in his Son are daily confirmed to us in the gospel. They should be the flame which kindles our love for God. The pity is that much of this passes us by. There are so few people who appreciate what we owe to Christ's blood and to the eternal salvation he has obtained for us….What change is visible in the lives we lead? The truth is that we plod along, as the saying goes, like Brown's cows, having little relish for what we are taught. Yet the very stones would break in two to hear the message of God's mercy that we hear, a message which lays open God's very heart! If these things fail to move us, is it not because Satan has bewitched us? And because we are so hardened that there is more feeling in blocks of wood or in stones than in us?" (John Calvin, in Robert White, trans., Songs Of The Nativity [Carlisle, Pennsylvania: Banner of Truth, 2008], 105-6)