Vernon County censor. [volume] (Viroqua, Wis.) 1865-1955, 1902-04-09

VAc ttotStET were consumed. lneFe We're
I 100000 dead according to JosephuS.
Grotius thinks that this was the cause of
silence in heaven for half an hour II
Mr.. Lord was right. and this silence was
during the Diocietian prosecutions. 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
yearsf 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
ehoruses in which all heaven can join,
each soul there has story of divine
mercy peculiar to itself, and it must be
a solo. How can heaven get through
with all its recitatives. with all its can
tatas with all its grand marches, with
all its victories? Eternity is too short 70
utter all the praise.
In my text heaven spared thirty min
utes. but it will never again spare one
minute. In worship in earthly churches
where there are many to take paIt we
haze to counsel brevity, but Low viii
heaven get on rapidly enough TO let one
hundred and forty-four thousand get
through each with his own story and then
one hundred and sorty-four million and
then one hundred and forty-four billion
and then one hundred ami lorty-four tril-
lion? Not only are ali the triumphs of
the past to be commemJra; ed but all the
triumphs to come Mt only what We
now know of God, but what ~ will
know of him after everlasting study Of
the deitic. If my text had said there was
silence in heaven for thirty days, | would
not have been startled at the announce
ment, 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 viii want to see, so
many of the inscrutable things of earth
we will need explained. so many excit-
ing earthly experiences we will want to
talk over, and all the other spirits and
ali 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 rs the heroes and
heroines that the world never fully APP
p-eciated- yellow fever and cholera
doctors who died, not flying from their
posts; the female nurses who faced pes
thence in the lazarettos; the railroad en-
gineers who stayed at their places in or
der TO save the train. though they them
selves persisted. The multitude 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 children.
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 FIVE hundred million of
them quiet half an hour? You know
heaven is much more of place than it
was when that recess of thirty minutes
occurred. Its population has quadrupled
sextupled centupied. Heaven has more
on hand, more of rapture more of kn0wl-
edge. more of intercommunieation, moro
of worship. The most thrilling place we
have ever been in is stupid compared
with thai, and. if We new have no time
to spare, we viii then have no eternity to
! spare. Silence in heaven only half an
hour!
That Immortal Half Hour.
Ny subject also inIpresses me with the
Immortality of half hour That half
hour mentioned in my text is more wide
ly 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 millions of
ages to come not one is especially meas
ured off in the Bible. But the half hour
of my text is made immortal The only
part of eternity that was ever measured
by earthly timepiece 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? Tell me the his
tory of your half hours and will tell you
the story of your whole life on earth and
the story of your whole life in eternity
The right or wrong things you can think
in thirty minutes, the right or wrong
! things you can say in thirty minutes. the
right or wrong things you can do in thirty
minutes are glorious or baleful, inspiring
or desperate
Look out for the fragments of time.
They are pieces OF eternity. 1t was the
half hours between shoeing horses that
made Elihu Burritt the learned black
smith, the half hours between profes-
! sional calls as a physician that made
Abercrombie the Christian philosopher,
| the half hours between his duties as
| schoolmaster that mnde Salmon F. Chase
chief justice. the half hours between shoe
/ lasts that made Henry Wilson vice presi-
| dent of the United States. the half hours
between canalboats that made James a.
| Garfield president. The half hour a day
| for good books or bad books. the half
hour a day for prayer or Incidence. the
/ half hour a day for helping others or
| blasting others, the half hour before you
go to business and the half hour after
you return from business-that makes the
| difference between the scholar and the
ignoramus. between the Christian and the
/ in6del. between the saint and the demon.
between triumph and catastrophe, be-
tween heaven and hell. The most ire
mendous things of your life and mine
were cerain half hours. The half hour
when in the parsonage Of a country min
| lister | resolved to become a Christian
then and there. the half hour when l de-
| cided to become a preacher of the gospel,
! the half hour when l first realized that
my son was dead. the half hour when
stood on the top Of my house in Oxford
street and saw our church burn, the half
! hour in which l entered Jerusalem, the
/ half hour in which | stopped on Mount
/ Calvary. the half hour in which | stood
on Mars hill and about ten or fifteen
other half hours are the chief times Of
my life. You may forget the name Of
| the exact years or most Of the important
events of your existence, but those half
hon t,,FE q ArvE