Luxury and religiousness help to harden the heart, and they give to the heart a peculiar hardness. The rough man who swears at, and scorns God’s mercy, is hard in his way; his hardness is like that of the rock which the blow of the hammer breaks in pieces. But the religiously hardened heart is like a lump of India-rubber, which, hit it as you will, only flings back the stroke of the hammer.
The ancient battering ram, which would crush down stone walls, and iron gates, was often baffled by bags of straw and soft substances placed in front of the walls and gates.
It is this India-rubber kind of hardness, this respectable, religious-hardness of heart, which is so difficult to overcome, and which repels, which flings hack, the blows of the gospel.