The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1902-05-08

cause, the temple being gone, there
was nothing for them to do. Six
thousand people in one cloister were
consumed. There were 1, 100000 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 Dioc1etian per-
secutions, by which $4,000 Christians
suffered death from sword and fire
and Punishment 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 crowded
with spectacle that it can afford only
one recess in all eternity, and that
for short space. While there are
great choruses in which all Heaven
can join, each soul there has story
of Divine mercy peculiar to itself,
and it must be solo. How can
Heaven get through with all it's reci-
tatives, with all it's cantatas, with
all its grand marches, with all its
victories? Eternity is too short to
utter all the praise.
I'm my text Heaven spared 80 min
utes, but it will never again spare
one minute. In worship in earthly
churches where there are many to
take part we have to counsel brew
ity, but how will Heaven get on rap
idly enough to let 144,0O0 get through
each with his own story and then
144, 900, 900 and then 144,000,000, 1000 and
then IA, ,O0o, 900, 100000? 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 everlasting study of the.
deific. If my text had said there
was silence in Heaven for 80 days, l
would not have been startled at the
announcement, but it indicates 80
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 inscru-
table things of earth we will need
explained, SO many exciting earthly
experiences we will want to talk
over, and all the earthly spirits and
all the other spirits and all the ages
will want the same, that there will
be no more opportunity for cessa-
ton. 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 them
selves perished. Hubert Coffin, the
master miner, who, landing from the
bracket 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 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:
s'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 null
titudes of men and women who got
no crown on earth we will want to
see when they get their crown in
Heaven. l 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
anything can be kept quiet half an
hour, and how are you going to keep
50OOO0O0O of them quiet half an
hour? You know Heaven is much
more of a place than it was when
| that recess of 30 minutes occurred.
It's population has quadrupled, sex
tupled, centupled. Heaven has more
on hand, more of rapture, more OF
knowledge, more of intercommunica
ton, more of worship. The most
| thrilling place we have ever been in
is stupid compared with that, and. if
l
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
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 is measured
off, none of the years, none of the cen
turies. Of the millions of ages past
and the millions 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 eter-
nifty that was ever measured by earth
| ly timepiece was measured by the min.
ute hand of my text. Oh, the half
hours! They decide everything. am
not asking what you will do with the
years OF months or days of your life
but what of the half hours? Tell me
the history of your half hours and
will tell you the story of your whoie
| life on earth and the story of your
whole life in eternity. The right OF