FRAGMENTS OF TIME

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 107, 22 May 1937, Page 8

FRAGMENTS OF TIME

* Look out for the fragments of time. They are pieces of eternity. The halfhour a day for good books • or bad books, the half-hour a day for prayer or indolence, the half-hour a day for aiding others or blasting others, the half-hour before you go to business, and the half-hour af ter you return from business; that makes the difPerence between tne scnoiar and the ignoramus, botween the Christian and the infidel, bctwecn the saint and the demon, between triumph -and catastrophe, between heaven and hell. The most tremendous things of your life and came were certain half-hours. The half-hour when, in the parsonage of a country minister. I resolved to become a Chris(ian then and . there, the half-hour. wkeu I decided 'to become a preacher' of the Gospel, the' half-hour vvhen I livst realised that my son was dead, the half-hour when I stood on the top of my- house and saw my church burn, the half-hour in which.I entered Jerusalem, the half-hour in . which I stopped on Mount Calvary, the half-hour in which I stood on Mars \ Hill, and about ten or iif teen other half-hours, are the chief times of my life. You.may forget the name or the exact year of most of the impbrtant events of your existence, but those half-hours will be iinmortal. I db not query whafr you will do with this year, .but what will you- do with the next half-hour? Upon that may hinge your destiny. .During that some of you will receive the Gospel and make complete surrender to Jesus Christ, and during that others of you will make linal and fatal rejection of the full and free'and impassioned offer of life eternal. Oh/that the next halfhour might be the most glorious thirty aiinutes of your earthly existence! Far back in history, a great geographer stood with a sailor, looking at a globe that. represented our planet, and he pointed to a place on the globe where he thought there was an undiscovered continent. That undiscovered continent was America, The geographer who pointed where he thought there was a new world was Martin Behaim, and the sailor to whom he showed it was Colurobus. The latter was not satislled tili he had picked that gem out of the sea, and set it in the crown of the world 's geography! O ye who have been sailing up and down the rough sea of sorrow and sin, let me point out to you anotker continent — yea, another world — that you may yoursclf iind a rapturous world, and that is the world a halfhour of which we now study. Oh, set sail for if! Here is the ship and here are the compases. In other words, make this half-hour the grandest half-hour of your life and become a Christian. Prny for a regenerated spirit. Louis XIV., while walking in the garden at Versailles, met Mansard, the greatest architect, and tho architect took off his hat before the king. "Put on your hat," said tho king, "for the evening is da/mp and cold." And Mansard, the architect, the rest of the evening kept on. his hat. The dukes and . m.arquiscs, standing with bare lieads before the king, expressed their surprise at Mansard; but the king said, "I can make a duke or a marquis, but only God can tnake a Mansard." And I say to you, my liearers, only God, by His convieting and converting. grace, can make a Christian; and Ro is .r eady this vcry half-hour to accomplish it. — Ecv. T. de Witt Talmage, D.D.