St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1902-05-17


temple firehrand, and the temple
was all afame. and after covering
many sacrifices to the holiness of
God the building itself became sac
rifice to the rage of man. The hun
ger of the people in that city dur
ing the besiegement was so great
that as some outlaws were passing
doorway and inhaled the odors of
food they burst open the door,
threatening the mother of the house
hold with death unless she gave them
some food, and she took them aside
and showed them that it was her
own child she was cooking for the
CHASTITY repast. Six hundred priests
were destroyed on Mount Zion be-
cause, the temple being gone, there
was nothing for them to do. Six
thousand people in one cloister were
consumed. There were 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 Diocletian 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 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 solo. How can
Heaven get through with all its recl'
tatives, with all it's cantatas, with
all it's grand marches, with all its
victories? Eternity is too short to
utter all the praise.
In my text Heaven spared 30 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 now will Heaven get on rap
idly enough to let $4,000 get through
each with his own story and then
144 600. 900 and then $4,000, 100000 and
then 144, 900 900, 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
deifc. 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 30
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 persisted. Hubert Coffin, the
master miner, who, landing from the
bracket at the bottom of the mine
lust as he heard the waters rush in
and when one jerk of the rope would
have lifted him into safety, put in
the bucket 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 tc
see when they get their crown in
Heaven. 1 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 ar
hour, and how are you going to KEEP
500 100000 of them quiet half ar
hour? You know. Heaven is much
more of a place than it was whe1
that recess Of 80 minutes occurred
It's population has quadrupled, sex
tuplcd, centupled. Heaven has more
on hand, more of rapture, more Of
knowledge, more of intercommunica
ton. more of worship. The mos
thrilling place we have ever been IL
is stupid compared with that, and. i
we now have no time to spare, WI
will then have no eternity to spare
Silence in Heaven only half an hour
NV subject also impresses me will
the immortality Of half hour. Tha
half hour mentioned in my text is NOR
widely known than any other period il
the calendar of Heaven. None of thu
whole hours of Heaven is measured
off, none of the years, none of the cen
turtles. OF the millions of ages pas
and the millions of ages to come no
one is especially measured off in tn
Bible. But the half hour of my text il
} made immortal. The only part of eter
} nitv that was ever measured by earth
} " timepiece was measured by the min
ute hand of my text. Oh, the hal
hours! They decide everything. I an
not asking what you will do with tn
years or months or days of your life
but what of the half hours? Tell m
the history of your half hours and