Connecticut western news., 1902-04-10


 were destroyed on Mount Zion because, the temple being gone, there was noth- ing for them to do. Six thousand peo- pie 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 MT. Lord was right, nd this silence was during the D1ocle- tian prosecutions, by which S44, 900 Christians suffered death from 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 programme is so crowded with spectacle that 1t 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 a story of divine mercy peculiar to itself, and 1t must be a solo. How can heaven get through with all its recitatives, with all its cantatas, with all its grand marches, with all its victories? Eter- nity is too short to utter all the praise.
 In my text heaven spared thirty min utes, but it will never again spare one minute. In worship in earthly church es where there are many to take part we have to counsel brevity, but how will heaven get on rapidly enough to let one hundred and forty-four thou sand get through each with his own story and then one hundred and forty four million and then one hundred and forty-four billion and then one hundred and forty-four trillion? Not only are all the triumphs of the past to be con- memorated, 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 thirty days, 1 would not have been startled at the announce ment, but 1t 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 inscrutable things of earth we will need explained, so many excit- ing earthly experiences we will want
  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 laza- rettos; the railroad engineers who stay ed 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 in the bucket blind miner who want ed to go to his sick child and jerked the rope for him to be pulled up, cry ing, '"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 com mand to the other miners till they dig ged 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. l tell you heaven will have no more half hours to spare.
 Besides that, heaven is full of chll- dren. They are in the vast majority. No child on earth who amounts to any thing can be kept quiet half an hour, and how are you going to keep five hun dred million of them quiet half an hour You know heaven is much more of a place than it was when that recess of thirty minutes occurred. Its popula- ton has quadrupled. sextupled, cen tupled. Heaven has more on hand, more of rapture, more of knowledge, 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 hourl
 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 widely known than any other period in the calendar of heaven. None of the whole hours of heaven is measured of, 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 of in the Bible. But the half hour of my text ii 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. I am not ask months or days of your life, but what of the half hours? Tell me the history of your half hours and 1 will tell you the story of your whole life on eartt and the story of your whole life in eter nity. The right or wrong things yor can think In thirty minutes, the righ' or wrong things you can say in thirtJ minutes, the right or wrong things yoI can do in thirty minutes are glorious ol baleful, inspiring or desperate.
 Look out for the fragments of time They are pieces of eternity. It wa. the half hours between shoeing horse. that made Elihu Burritt the learned blacksmith, the half hours betweer professional calls as a physician tha | made Abercrombie the Christian phi losopher, the half hours between hii | duties as schoolmaster that made Sal mon F. Chase chief justice, the hal | hours between shoe lasts that mad, | Henry Wilson vice president of tn, 1 United States, the half hours betweel
 canalboats that made James A. Gar field president. The half hour a da,
 for good books or bad books, the hal
 hour a day for prayer or incidence, tn
 half hour a day for helping others o
 blasting others, the half hour befor
 you go to business and the half hou
 after you return from business-tha
 makes the difference between the schol
 Gr and the ignoramus, between tn
 Christian and the infldel, between tn
 saint and the demon, between trump
 and catastrophe, between heaven an ! hell. The most tremendous things o | vO1r HPa oud mino uoro aartoin ho