The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-04-13


 seemed to demand a whole year for ce- iestial consideration. If 0rotius was right and this silence occurred at the time of the destruction of Jersualem, that that the inhabitants of Heaven could not have done justice to 1t in many weeks. After fearful besiegement of the two fortresses of Jerusalem, Antopta and h'' H,ppicus. had been goinog on 10, a a Ions ,ss shoulder of another soldier. hurled into the window of the temple a firebrand. and the temple was all afiame. and after covering many sacrifices to the holiness of God. the building itself became a sac- ridcs to the rage of man. The hunger of the people in that city during the be- siegement was so great that as some outlaws were passing doorway and in- 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 1t was her iy repast. six hundred priests were de- stroyed on Mount Zion because. the tenn pie being gone, there was nothing for them to do. Six thousand people in one i.ioo.o0o dead according to Josephus Gro- tius thinks that this was the cause of silence in Heaven for half an hour. If Mir. Lord was right, and this silence was which s4i.coo Christians suffered death by the 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 program. is so crowded with spectacle that 1t caA afford only one recess in all eternity, and that for short space. While there are great choruses in which all Heaven can join, mercy peculiar to itself. and it must be a solo How can Heaven get through with all its recitatives, with all it's can tatas, with all its grand marches. with to utter all the praise.
 In my text Heaven spared thirty min. utes, but 1t will never again spare one minute. In worship in earthly churches have to counsel brevity, but how will Heaven get on rapidly enough to let one hundred and forty-four thousand get through each with his own story. and and then one hundred and forty-four bil- lion and then one hundred and forty-four trillton? Not only arc all the triumphs of the past to be -eommemerated, but all we now know of God. but what we will know of Him after everlasting study of the deifc If my text had said there was silence in Heaven for thirty days, 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 ts see. so many of the inscrutable 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 cessa- tion How busy we will be kept in having pointed out to us the heroes and heroincs that the world never fully appreciated- the yellow fever and cholera doctors who faA Axylne fhaft .nata fha male nurses who faced pestilence in the lazarettos; the railroad engineers who stayed at their places in order to save the train. though they. themselves per- ished. Hubert Coffin. the master miner, who. landing from the bucket at the bot tom of the m inc just as he heard the waters rush in and when one jerk of the rope would have lifted him into safety, put in the bucket a blind miner who wanted to go to his sick child 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 other end of the right gall lery." and then giving the command to the other miners till they digged them selves so near out that the people from the outside could come to their rescue. The multtudes of men and women who got no crown on earth we will want to see when they get their crown in Heav- en. tell you Heaven will have no more halt hours to spare.
 
 They arc in the vast majority. No child on earth who amounts to anything can keep quiet half an hour. and how are you going to keep five hundred million of them quiet ha6 an hour? You know Heaven is much more of a 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 knowl- edge, more of intercommunication. more of worship 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!
 That Immortal Half Hour.
 My subject also impresses me with the immortality of a half hour. That half hour mentioned in my text is more wide iy known than any other period in the calendar of Heaven. None of the whole hours of Heaven is measured off, none of the years, none of the centuries. Of the millions of ages past and the mill Hons of ages to come not one is especially measured off in the Bible. But the half hour of my text is made immortal. The only part of eternity that was ever meas ured by earthly tinepiece was measured by the minute hand of my text. Oh. the half hours They decide everything. am not asking what you will do with the years or months or days of your life but what of the half hours? Teu me the history of your half hours and I will tell you the story of your whole life on earth and the story of your whole life In eter- nifty. The right or wrong things you can