Savannah morning news. [volume] (Savannah) 1868-1887, 1885-06-22
MIDSUMMER TEMPTATION
DIR. TAIMAGE breaches ON
THEDANGERs OFTHE SEASON.


BROOKLYN, n. Y, June 2l.-Dr. Tai
mage's sermon at the Brooklyn Taber-
nacle this morning was on the subject
'sJuly and August Temptations" Be
fore the sermon he read passages OF
scripture concerning the gardens OF the
Bible. The opening hymn was;
"Come we who love the Lord
And let our joys be known"
The text was from Mark vi, 81: ''Come
We yourselves apart into a desert place
and rest awhile" The following Is DR..
Talmage's sermon in full:
Here Christ advises his apostles to take
a vacation. They had been living an eX-
cited as well as a useful life, and he ad-
vses that they get out into the country.
When, six weeks ago, standing in this
place, / advocated, with all the energy l
could command, the Saturday afternoon
holiday. / did not think the people would
so soon get that release. BY divine fat
1t has come, and | rejoice that more pe0-
pie will have opportunity of recreation
this summer than in any previous sum-
mer. Others VIII have whole weeks and
months of rest. The railway trains are
being laden with passengers and baggage
on their way to the mountains and the
lakes and the sea shore. Multitudes Of
our citizens are packing their trunks for
arestOrative absence. The city heats are
pursuing the people with torch and fear
Of suustToke. The long silent halls OF
sumptuOus hotels are all abuz with eX-
cited arrivals. The crystalline surface Of
WinnipiseOgee is shattered with the stroke
of steamers laden with eXcursionists. The
antlers Of Adirondack deer rattle under the
shot Of city spOrtsmen. The trout make
fatal snap at the hook Of 2droit spOrtsmen
and toss their spotted briliiance into the
game basket. Already the baton of the
orchestral leader taps the music stand on
the hotel green and American life puts
on festal array, and the Tumbling of the
ten-pin alley and the crack of the ivory
balls on the green-baized billiard tables,
and the joltiDg of the barrOOm goblets
and the explosive uncorking of
champagne bottles, and the whirl
and the rustic of the ball room
dance, and the gathering hoofs Of the race
courses attest that the season for the
great American watering places is fairly
dnaugurated Music! Flute and drum
and coTnet-a- piston and clapping cymbals
will wake the echoes of the mountains.
Glad am that fagged-Out American life
for the most part will have an opportunity
TO rest, and that nerves racked and de-
stroyed will lind a Bethesda.
believe in watering places. Let not
the commercial firm begrudRe the clerk,
or the employer the jOurneyman, or the
patient the physician, or the church
its pastor a season Of inoccupa-
ton. Luther used to sport with
mis- children; Edmund Burke used to ca
ress his fayorite horse: Thomas Chalmers
in the dark hour of the church's disrup-
ton played kite for recreatiOn-sO | was
told by his own daughter--and the busy
Christ said to the busy apostles: "COme
We apart awhile into the desert and rest
yourselves" And ! have observed that
they who do not know how to rest do not
know how to work.
But haYe to declare this truth to-day,
that some of our fashionable watering
places are the temporal and eternal
destruction of multitude that no
man can number; and amid the con-
gTatulatOns of this season and the
prospect of the departure of many
OF you for the country, l must utter
a note of warning, plain, earnest and un-
mistakable. The first temptation that is
apt to hover in this direction is to leave
your piety all at home. You will send the
Cog and cat and canary bird to be well
cared for somewhere else; but
the temptation will be to leave
your religion in the room with
the blinds down and the door bOlted, and
y
to find that it is starved and suffOcated,
lying stretched on the rug, stark dead.
There is no surplus Of piety at the water
ing places. / never knew anyone to grow
very rapidly in grace at the Catskiil
Mountain House or Sharon Springs or the
Falls OF MontmOrency. 1t is generally the
case that the sabbath is more of a ca
rousal than any other day, and there are
Sunday walks and Sunday rides and Sun
IL ns.c5Fn ar.A Afn1 4
ministers of religion who are entirely con.
sistent at home, sometimes, when the Sab.
bath dawns on them at Niagara Falls OF
the White Mountains, take the day To
themselves. If they 20 to the church
il is ant to be a sacred
parade, and the discourse, instead of being
a plain talk about the soul. rs apt to be
what is called crack sermOn-that is,
some discourse picked out of the effus-
ions Of the year as the one most adapted
10 excite admiration, and in those
churches, from the way the ladies hold
their faces, you know that they are not 80
much impressed with the heat as with the
picturesqueness Of haif-disclOsed features.
-Four puny souls stand In the organ loft
and squall "a tune that nobody knows, and
wOrshipers with two thousand dollars
worth Of diamonds on the right hand
drop cent into the poor box and then the
DtutuitLlon 10 pronounced anu the farce
is ended. The toughest thing | ever tried
TO do was 10 be good At a watering place.
The air is bewitcbed with the world,
the flesh and the devil. There are Chris
tians VINO. in three or four weeks in such
a place, have had such terrible rents made
in their Christian robe that they had to
keep darning il until Christmas TO get Il
mended! The health of a great many
people makes an annual visit TO some
mineral spring an absolute necessity
But, my dear people, take your Bible
along with you, and take an hour for Sc.
cret prayer every day, though you be sur.
rounded by gutiaw and saturnalia. Keep
holy the Sabbath, though they deride YOU
as a bigOted Puritan. Stand OF from those
institutions which propose 10 initiate on
this side the water the iniquities of Baden
Baden. Let your moral and your immor
tai health keep pace with your physical
recuperaton, and remember that all the
waters OF Hathorne and sulphur and
Chaly beate springs cannot do you so much
go0Od as the mineral, healing, perennial
mood that breaks forth from the "Rock OIL
Ages This may be your last summer
If 30, make IL a Nc vestibule OF heaven.
Another temptation around nearly al
our watering places Is the horse-racing
business. We all admire the horse
There needs to be redistribution OF cOro
nets among the brute creation. For ages
the lion has been called the kingOf beasts
] knock of its cOrOnet aud put the crown
upon the horse. in every way noblcr
whether in shape or spirit. or sagacitN
Sea. H..