The free press., 1892-02-18

had said there was silence in heaven for
thirty days l would not have been startled
at the announcement, but it indicates thirty
minutes. Why, there will be so many friends
i 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
expained;, so many exciting earthly exper-
| fences 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
yellow fever and cholera doctors VINO 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 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 but we will
seek refuge at the her end of the right gal
| lery;" 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 multitudes
| 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 that 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 much
more of place than it was when that recess
of thirty minutes occurred. Its population
has quadrupled, sextupled, centupled.
Heaven has more on hand, more of rapture
more of knowledge, more of intercommunica-
ton, more of worship.
There is not SO much difference between
Brooklyn seventy-five years ago, when there
were a few houses down on the East river
and the village reached up only to Sands
street, as compared with what this great
city is now-yea, not SO much difference be-
tween New York when Canal street was far
up town. and now when Canal street is far
down town, than there is a difference be-
tween 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 III heaven only half an
hour.
My subject also impresses me with the i'm
mortality of 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 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 hoursl They decide every
thing. l am not asking what you will do
with the wears or months or days of your
life, but 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 wrong things
YOU can say in thirty minutes, the right or
wrong things you can do in thirty minutes
are glorious or baleful, inspiring or desper-
ate Look out for the fragments of time.
They are pieces of eternity.
1t was the half hours between shoeing
horses that made Elihu Burritt the learned /
blacksmith; the half hours between pro-
fessiona calls as a physician that made
Abercrombie the Christian philosopher; the
half hours between his duties as school
master that made Salmon T. Chase chief
Justice, the half hours between 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 a day for good books or bad
books, the half hour day for prayer or in
dolence, the half hour day for helping
others or blasting others, the half hour be
fore you go to business and the half hour
after your return from business-that makes
a., bat t,n |
ignoramus, between the Christian and the
infidel, between the saint and the demon, be
tween triumph and catastrophe, between
heaven and hell. The most tremendous
things of your life and mine were certain
half hours.
The half hour when in the parsonage of
country minister | resolved to become
Christian then and there; the half hour
when decided to become preacher of the
Gospel. the half hour when | first realized
that my son was deads the half hour when
stood on the top of my house IN Oxford
street and saw our church burn; the half
hour in which l entered Jerusalem, the
half hour in which l ascenced Mount Cal
vary; the half hour in which L stood on
Mars hill; the half hour in which the dedi-
catory 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 of the exact years or most of the i'm
portant events of your existence, but those
half hours. like the half hour of my text, will
be immortal.
do not query what you will do with the
Twentieth century. 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
surrender, and during that others of you
will make final and fatal rejection of the
full and free and urgent and impassioned
offer of life eternal. Oh, that the next half
hour might be the most glorious thirty min
utes of your earthly existence.
Far back in history a great geographer
stood with a sailor looking at a globe that
represented our planet, and he pointed to a
place on the globe where he thought there
was an undiscovered continent That un-
discovered continent was America The
geographer who pointed where he thought
there was a new world was Martin Behaim,
and the sailor to whom he showed it was
Columbus This last was not satisfied till he |