Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1892-02-01

never stopped a moment IOf Any
such occurrence but it stopped thirty
minutes for the coronation of Silence.
There was silence in heaven for
half an hour
THEY ARE BUSY IN HEAVEN.
Learn also from my text that
heaven must be an eventful and &C.
tive place, from the fact that it could
afford only thirty minutes of recess.
There have been events on earth and
in heaven that seemed to demand a
whole day or a whole week or whole
year for celestial consideration. If
Grotius was right and this silence oc-
Cured 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 JUS
tice to it in many weeks After fear
full besiegement Of the two fOrtresses
of Jerusalem Antonio and HippicuS
had been going on for a long WHILE
a Roman soldier mounted on the
shoulders of another soldier hurled
into the window of the temple fire
brand and the temple was all afiame,
and after covering many sacrifices to
the holiness of God the building it
self became 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 that she was cooking
for the CHASTITY repast. Six hundred
priests were destroyed on Mount Zion
because the temple being gone there
was nothing for them to do Six
thousand people in one cloister were
consumed There were one million
one hundred thousand dead. accord
ing to Josephus Grotius thinks that
this was the cause Of silence in heaven
for half an hour
If Mr.. Lord was right and this 81
lence was during the Diocletian per-
secutions, by which eight hundred
and fortyfour thousand Christians
suffered death from sword and fire
and Punishment and exposure, why
did not heaven listen throughout at
least one of those awful years? MOI
Thirty minutesl 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 choruses in which all heaven
can join. each soul there has a story
Of divine mercy peculiar to itself,
and it must be a solo. How can
heaven get through with all its reel
tatives, with all it's c;,ntos, with all
its grand marches, with all its vic
tories2 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 brew
ity, but how will heaven get on rap
idly enough to let one hundred and
forty four thousand get through
each with his own story. and then
the one hundred and forty four mil
lion. and then the one hundred and
forty four billion. and then the one
hundred and forty four trilliOn.
TRIUMPHs TO BE COMMEMORATIVE.
Not only are all the t1'iumphs of
the past to be cOmmemorated. but
all the triumphs to come. Not only
what we now know of God but what
ing study of the Deitic If my text
had said there was silence in heaven
for thirty days | 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 to see; so
many of the inscl'utable 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 yellow fever and
cholera doctors who died, not flying
from their posts; the female nurses
who faced pestilence in the lazarettos;
the raill%.d engineers who staid at
their places in order to save the train
though they themselves persisted.
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 at the rope would have lifted
him into safety. put blind miner who