Courier Democrat. (Langdon, N.D.) 1891-1920, 1892-02-18

full years? No! Thirty minutes! The
TACT is that the celestial program was
SO crowded with spectacle that it can
afford only one recess in all eternity
and that for a short space.
Not only are all the triumphs of the
past to be commemorated. but all
the triumphs to come. Not only
what we know of God, but what we
will know of him after
EVERLASTING STUDY OF THE DElT1c.
If my text had said there was silence
in heaven for 80 days, would not
have been startled at tho announce
ment, but 1t indicates 80 minutes.
Why, there will be so many friends to
hunt up; so many OF the greatly good
and useful that we will want to see;
so many OF the inscrutable things of
earth we will need explained;
so many exciting earthly ex-
periences we will want to talk over,
and all the other spirits and all
the ages will want the same, that
there will be no opportunity for cessa-
having pointed out to us the heroes
and heroines that the world never
fully appreciated-the yellow fever
and cholera doctors, who died not
flying from their posts; the female
nurses who faced pestilence in the laz-
arettos; the railroad engineers who
stayed at their places in order to save
the train though they themselves
persisted. The multitudes of men and
women who got no crown on earth,
we will want to see when they get
their crown in heaven. I tell YOU
heaven will have no more half hours
to spare.
Besides that, heaven is full of chill
dren: They are in the vast majority.
No child on earth who amounts to
anything can be kept quiet half an
hour, and how are you going to keep
five hundred of them quiet half an
hour? You know heaven is much
more of place than it was when that
recess of thirty minutes occurred. It's
population has quadrupled, sextupled,
centupled. Heaven has more on hand,
more of rapture, more of knowledge,
more of INSTRUMENTATION, more
OF worship.
My subject also impresses
me with the Immortality of
half-hour. That half-hour men
toned in my text is more widely
known than any other period in the
calendar of heaven. None of the
whole hours of heaven are measured
off, none of the years, none of the
centuries. OF the millions of ages past,
and the millions OF ages to come, not
one is especially measured off in the
Bible. The half-hour OF my text
is MADE IMMORTAL.
The only part of eternity that was
ever measured by earthly timepiece
was measured by the minute hand of
my text. Oh, the half-hours! They
decide everything. l am not asking
you what you will do with the years
or months or days OF your life, but
what of the half-hours. Tell me the
history OF your half-hours and I will
tell you the story of your whole life in
eternity. The right or wrong things
you can think in 80 minutes, the
right or wrong things you can say in 80
minutes, theright or wrong things you
can do in 80 minutes are glorious or
baleful, inspiring or desperate. Look
out for the fragments of time.
It was the half-hours be-
tween shoeing horses that made
Elihu Burritt the learned blacksmith,
the half-hours between professional
calls as a physician that made Aber-
combie the Christian philosopher, the
halfhours between his duties as
school master that made Salmon P.
Chase chief-justice, the half-hours be-
tween shoe-lasts that made Henry
Wilson vice-president Of the United
States, the half-hours between canal
boats that made James A. Garfield
president. The half-hour day for
good books or bad books; the half
hour day for prayer or Incidence;
the half-hour day for helping others
or blasting others; the half-hour be-
fore you go to business, and the half
hour after you return from business;
that makes the difference between the
scholar and the ignoramus, between
the Christian and the infidel, between
the saint and the demon, between tri-
umph and catastrophe, between heav-
en- and hell.
Again, my text suggests way of
studying heaven so that we can better
understand it. The word "eternity"
that we handle so much is an i'm
measurable word. Knowing that we
could not understand that word, the
Bible uses it only once. We say
"For ever and ever" But how long
is "For ever and ever?" I am glad
that my text puts under our eye
heaven for 80 minutes. AS when you
would see a greet picture, you put a
sheet OF paper into a scroll, and look
through it, or join your foreinger to
your thumb look through the circle
between, and the picture becomes
more intense, SO this masterpiece of
heaven by st. John is more impress
sive when we take only 80 minutes of
it at time. Now, we have some
thing that we can come nearer to
grasping, and it is a quiet heaven.
When we discourse about the multi
tudes of heaven, it must be also q
nervous shock to those who have all
their lives been crowded by many
people, and who want quiet heaven.