The Bossier banner., 1892-04-07


was all afiame, 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 besiegement was so great
that as some outlaws were passing a
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 cook
ing for the ghastly repast, Six hundred
priests were destroyed on Mount Zion
because the temple being gone there
was nothing for them to do. Six thou
sand people in one cloister were con-
sumed. There were one million one
hundred thousand dead, according to
Josephus. Grotins 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.iour thou
sand Christians suffered death
| from sword and fire, and banishment
and exposure, why did not Heaven listen
throughout at least one of those awful
years? No! Thirty minutes! The fact is
that the celestial programme is so crowd
ed with spectacle that it cal afford only
one recess in all eternity, and that for
q short space. While there are great
choruses in which all Heavan can io1n,
| ct Of nuST
mercy peculiar to itself, and it must be
solo. How can Heaven get through
with all its recitatives, with it's can
tatas, with all its grand marches, with
all its victories? 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 thousand get
through each with his own story,
| and then the 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 commend rated, 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
Deific. If my text had said there was
silence in Heaven for thirty days l
would not have been startled at the an
nouncement, but it indicates thirty min
utes. 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 inscruta-
bic things of earth we will need ex-
planned; 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 more opportunity for cessa-
tion. How busy we will be kept in
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 lazarettos;
the railroad engineers who stayed 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
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
n md yoH ha fD, h, l.
up, crying: Tell them the water has
burst in and 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
digged themselves SO near out that
the people from the outside could come
to their rescue. The multitndes 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 chill
dren. They are in the vast majority
No child on earth who amounts to any
thing 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 much more
of place than it was when that recess
of thirty minutes occurred. It's popu-
lation has quadrupled, sextupled, CEN
tupled. Heaven has more on hand,
more of rapture, more of knowledge,
more of intercommunication, more of
worship. There is not SO much differ
ence between Brooklyn seventy-five
years ago, when there were few houses
down on the East river, and the village
reached up only to Sand street, as COM
pared with what this grea$ city is now
yea, not so much difference between
New York when Canal street was far
up town and now when Canal stceet is
far down town, than there is a differ |
ence between what Heaven was when
my text was written and 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
to spare we will then have no eternity |
to spare. Silence in Heaven only half |
an hour!
My subject also impresses me with |
the immortality of half hour. That |