Calvinism: Six Stone Lectures

by Abraham Kuyper

For this reason God even impressed a religious expression on the whole of unconscious nature—on plants, on animals and also on children. “The whole earth is full of His glory” (Ps. 72:19; Isa. 6:3). “How excellent is Thy Name, God, in all the earth” (Ps. 8:1). “The Heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament sheweth His handiwork” (Ps. 19:1). “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings Thou hast ordained praise” (Ps. 8:2; Matt. 21:16). Frost and hail, snow and vapor, the abyss and the hurricane—everything praises God. But just as the entire creation reaches its culminating point in man, so also religion finds its clear expression only in man who is made in the image of God, and this not because man seeks it, but because God Himself implanted in man’s nature the real essential religious expression, by means of the “seed of religion” (semen religionis), as Calvin defines it, sown in our human heart.