p. 42 | CAN’T BE HOLY? by D. F. Newton

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 6, 1868

“CAN’T BE HOLY?”

By D. F. Newton

Who says so? Satan, and your own carnal, unbelieving, unsanctified heart? Be holy! not in your own strength, wisdom, or grace—for of these you have none—“But, is anything too hard for the Lord?” The declarations of the Bible on the subject of entire sanctification, or “holiness to the Lord,” are plain, positive, unmistakable, and yet it is thought to be too hard for God to do it. How this idea has floated around in the church from age to age; been refuted again and again, and yet when you think about the entire sanctification of your soul, up comes the old thought, that it is a hard thing to be done. How is it that this thought is so much in the way of him who would be holy?

It is a suggestion of the Devil. All your thoughts, in opposition to holiness, are furnished you by the devil. Many of them are so cunning and subtle that you could never forge them out, but Satan originates and furnishes them to you free of charge. I have known persons of very ordinary gifts and attainments to present arguments against the immediate sanctification of the soul, that it required somewhat of thought to overthrow; and I wondered how such ordinary minds could present such subtle arguments; but I think I understand it now. These arguments smell of brimstone, they are of satanic origin, and he foists them into your mind so adroitly that you think them your own. Satan says it is “too hard” a thing for the Lord to sanctify your soul just now.

You have tried in your own strength to repress and subdue the unholy risings of passion in your heart, and have failed. You might just as well have tried to hold a lid on the crater of Mount Vesuvius in the time of an eruption. Having failed to cleanse your heart, you are about ready to think it “too hard for the Lord.” You have fed your unbelief in watching others. You have watched those who make profession of holiness; have taken their infirmities and mistakes, and called them sins, and hence inferred that they had not been made perfect in love. Your next step was to consider that inasmuch as those whom you had been watching were not sanctified, that God had not, and so could not, sanctify any. It is “too hard for the Lord.”

Or perhaps you earnestly sought the blessing of the Lord, but you did not make an entire consecration. There was a bow, or a frill, or a flower on your bonnet, or dress, or a costly something about you, a coat, a house, or table, or carriage, or store, or speech, that pride loved to have so, that you did not lay down at the foot of the cross, and yet you sought long and ardently for the blessing of holiness; of course you did not obtain it, became discouraged, you are now willing to say “It is too, hard for the Lord?” But “is anything too hard for the Lord?” When did he undertake a work and fail? David was a man whose passions sometimes burned like furnace fires, but God sanctified him so that he was a man “after his own heart.” Saul headed the gang that with stones murdered the holy Stephen, and yet Jesus’ blood made him a holy man. John Bunyan had a heart that glowed with unholy fire, and a brow that hung black with sin, and yet, through sanctifying grace, he became a lamb of purity, and, for many a year before his death, fed in the green pastures of Beulah’s land. Benjamin Abbott had a rowdy’s spirit, a rowdy’s arm, a rowdy’s fist, and yet God transformed him into a saint, whose face of love it was a blessing to see. Away with such unbelief; get on thy knees, and say with a little girl that tried to quote the text, “There is nothing too hard for the Lord to do.”

D. F. NEWTON.