Fort Worth gazette. [volume] (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1891-1898, 1892-02-04
the race is not forever got
BY him who fastest runs,
Nor the Battel BY those peopel

the churches:
the race is not forever got
BY him who fastest runs.
Nor the Battel by those peopeu
That shoot with the longest guns.
My friends, the tossing sea OF Galilee
seemed most to offend Christ by the amount
of noise it made, for he said to it: BE
stinp Heaven has been browning kings
and queens unto God for many centuries,
yet heaven never stopped moment for
any such occurrence. but it stopped thirty
minutes for the coronation of Silence.
There was silence in heaven for the space
of half an hour."
Learn also from my text that heaven
must be an eventful and active place, from
the fact that IL could afford only thirty
minutes of recess. There have been events
on earth and In heaven that seemed to de-
maud a whole day or a whole week or a
whole year for celestial consideration. If
Grotius was right, and this silence occurred
at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem,
that scene was so awful and so prolonged
that the inhabitants of heaven could not
have done Justice 10 it IN many weeks. After
fearful besiegement of the two fortresseS of
Jerusalem, Antonio and Hippicus, had been
going on for long while, Roman soldier
mounted on the shoulder of another sol
der hurled into the window of the temple
frebrand, and the temple was all aflame,
and after covering many sacrifices to the
holiness of God, the building itself became
a sacrifice to the rage of man. The hunger
of the people in that city during the be-
siegement was so great thatuas some out
laws were passing doorway and inhaled
the odors of food, they burst open the door,
threatening the mother of the household
with death unless she gave them
some food, and she took them
aside and showed them that it
was her own child she was cooking for the
CHASTITY repast. Six hundred priests were
destroyed on Mount Zion because the tenn
pie being gone there was nothing for them
to do. Six thousand people in one cloister
were consumed. There were !, 1000
dead, according to Josephus. Grotius
thinks that this was the cause of silence
in heaven for half an hour. If Mr.. Lord
was right and this silence was during the
Diocletian prosecutions, by which eight
hundred and forty-four thousand Christians
suffered death from sword and fire, and
Punishment and exposure, why did not
heaven listen throughout at least one OF
those awful years2 MOI Thirty minutes
The fact is that the celestial programme is
so crowded with spectacle that it can afford
only one recess in all eternity, and that for
a short space. While there are great cho-
ruses in which all heaven can ic n, each soul
there has a story of divine mercy peculiar TO
itself, and it must be solo. How can heaven
all its cantatas, with all its grand marches,
with all its victories2 Eternity IS too short
TO utter all the praise. In my text heaven
spared thirty minutes, but it will never
again spare one minute In worship In
earthly churches, when there are many to
take part, we have to counsel brevity, but
how will heaven get on rapidly enough to
let the one hundred and forty-four thou
sand get through each with his own story,
and then the one one hundred and forty
four million, and then the one hundred and
forty-four billion, and then the one hundred
and forty-four trillion.
Not only are all the triumphs Of the past
to be commemorated, but all the triumphS
to come. Not only what we now know of God,
but what we will know OF him after ever
lasting study of the Deific If my text
had said there was silence in heaven for
thirty days, I would not have been startled
at the announcement, but it indicates thirty
minutes. Why, there will be so many
friends to hunt up; so many of the
greatly good and useful that we
will want too see; so many
of the iHscrutable things of earth
we will need explained: so many exciting
earthly experiences we will want to talk
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 heroines that the
world never fully appreciated-the yell
low fever and cholera doctors. who died
not flying from their posts; the female
lazarettos; the railroad engineers
who stayed at their places in order
to save the train though they them
selves persisted. Hubert Coffin, the mas
ter-miner, who landing from the bucket ut
the bottom of the mine, Just as he heard
the waters rush in, and when one jerk of
the rope would have lifted him into safety,
put blind miner who wanted to go TO his
sick child, in the bucket and jerked the rope
for him TO be pulled up, crying; Tell them
the water has burst in and we are probably
lost: bpt we Will seek refuge at the other
end of the right gallery and then giving
the command to the other m aers till they
dug themselves so near out that the
people from the outside could come to their
rescue. The Inultitudes of men and women
who got no crown on earth. we Will want
TO see when they get their crown in heaven.
tell you heaven will have no more half
hours to spare.
Besides that, heaven is full of children
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 million of them
Quiet half an hour You know heaven is
that recess of thirty minutes occurred. Its
population has quadrupled, sexfupled, cen
tupled. Heaven has moro On hand, more
of rapture, more of knowledge, more Of
intercommunication, more of worship.
There is not so much differ-
enca between Brooklyn seventy-tive
yesrs ago, when there were few houses
down on the East river~ and the village
reached up cnly TO Sands street. as cona-
pared with what this great city Is now
yea, not so much difference between New
York when Canal street was far uptown
and now when Canal street is far down
town, than there is difference between
what heaven WIS when my text was writ |
ten aud what heaven is now. The most
thrilling place we have ever been in is
stupid compared with that, and, if we now !
have no time 10 spare, we will then have !
20 eternity TO spare. Silence in heaven
0nly half an bourl
Ny subject also impresses me with the |
Of half hour. That half 5our |
entioned IN my text is more widely known !
han any other period in the calendar of /
heaven. None of the whole hours OF heaven I
l-e measured OF. none Of tbs years, none OF /
the centuries. OF the millions Of ages past, |
- f.