The Pickens sentinel. [volume] (Pickens, S.C.) 1871-1903, 1892-02-11

we Will want 10 Calk over, and all the
other spirits and all the ages will want
the same. that there will be no more
opportunity for cessation.
| How busy we will be kept in having
pointed out to us the heroes and hero.
ines that the world never fully appre-
ciated--the yellow fever and cholera
doctors who died, not flying from their
posts: the female nurses who faced
pestilence in the lazarettos; the railroad
engineers who staid at their places in
order to save the train though they
themselves perished.
Hubert Coffin, the master miner. who
landing from the bucket at the bottom
or the mine, just as he heard the wa
tiers rush in, and when one jerk of the
rope would have lifted him into safety.
put blind miner who wanted to 20 to
his SICK child in the bucket and jerked
the rope for him to be pulled up, cry
ing, "Tell them the water has burst in
ana we are probably lost, but we will
seek refuge at the other end of the
right gallery" and then giving the
command to the other miners till they
dlgged themselves SO near out that the
people from the outside could come to
their rescue. The multitudes of men
and women who got no crown on earth
we Will want to see when they get their
crown in heaven. l 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 that amounts to any
thing can be kept quiet half an hour,
and how ale you. going to keep five
hundred million of them quiet half an
hour. You know heaven is much more
of place than it was when that recess
OF thirty minutes occurred. Its popula-
tion has quardrupled, sextupled, CEN
tupled. Heaven has more on hand.
more of rapture, more of knowledge,
more of ntercommunication, more of
worship.
My subject also impresses me with
the immortality of a half hour. That
half hour mentioned 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
OIL, none OF the years, none of the cen
turies. 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 eter-
nifty that was ever measured by earthly
tlmeplece was measured by the minute
hand of my text
Oh, the half hours. They decide
everything. l am not asking what you
Will do with the years or months or
days Of your life, buC what of the half
hours. Tell me the history of your half
hours and l will tell you the story of
your whole life on earth and the story
OF your whole life in eternity. The
right or wrong things you can think in
thirty minutes, the right or worng
things you can say in thirty minutes
the right or worng things you can do in
thirty minutes are glorious or baleful
J inspiring or desperate. Look out fol-
the fragments of time. They are pieces
Of eternity.
The half hour when in the parsonage
or a country minister / resolved to be-
come Christian then and there: the
half hour when l decided to become q
J preacher of the Gospel; the half hour
J when l first realized that my son was
dead; the half hour when l stood on
the top of my house in Oxford street
and saw our church burn the half hour
, in which entered Jerusalem; the half
hour in which 1 ascended Mount Cal
vary; the half hour in which stood on
Mars hill; the half hour in which the
dedicatory prayer of this temple was
made, and about ten or fifteen other
half hours are the chief times OF my
life. You may forget the name the
exact years or most of the importaut
events OF your existence, but those half
hours like the hour of my text, will be
immortal.
do not query what you will do with
the twentieth centuary, do not query
what you will do with 1892, but what
will you do with the next half hour
Upon that hinges your destiny. And
during that some of you will receive
the Gospel and make complete surren-
der, and during that others Of you will
make final and fatal rejection of the
full and free and urgent and impas-
, stoned offer of life eternal. On, that
the next half hour might be the most
: glorious thirty minutes of your earthly
eXlStenc e.
Far back in history a great geogra-
pher stood with a sailor looking at a
globe that represented our planet, and
ne pointed to place on the globe where
he thought there was an undiscovered
continent. The undiscovered continent
was America. The geographer who
pointed where be thought there was
new world was Martin Behaim, and the
sailor 10 who he showed it was Colum.
puS. IniS last was not satisfied till he
nad picked. that gem out of the sea and
set IL IN the crown of the worlds geog
| "P,y' va, yS WIN nave D66l sailing uI
ana down the rough seas of sorrow and
SIN, let me point out to you another
continent, yea, another world. that you
may yourselves find rapturous world
and that Is the world a half hour OF
which we now study. Oh, set sail fol-
it! Here il the ship and here are the
compasses.
Again, my text suggests way OF
!, studying heaven so that we can better
understand il. The word "eternity'
that we handle so much is an immeas
ura ble world. Knowing that we could
not understand that word the Bible uses
IL only once; We says, Forever and
ever" but how long is forever anC
ever?" 1 am glad that my text puts
under our eye heaven for thirty MN
utes. AS when you would see great
picture you put a sheet of paper into {
scroll and look through it, or join youl
forelinger to your thumb and iool
through the circle between, and the
picture becomes more intense, so this
masterpiece of heaven by st. John /!
, more impressive when we take only
thirty minutes of it at a time. Now we