The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-06-22
HOT-WEATHER TEMPTATIONS
DR.. Talmage Talks of the Moral Dam
gers that Lurk in Summer Resorts.
The Preachers Solemn Warning Against the
Fast Horse, Hasty Matrimony, Pernicious
Literature and Intoxicating Drinks.
Special to tho Indianapolis Journal.

opening hymn was:
"Come we who love the Lord
And let our joys be known"
The text was from Mark VII 81: Come We your
selves apart into desert place and rest awhile. "
Following is Dr. Talmage's sermon in ful
Here Christ advises His apostles to take a va
cation. They had been living an excited as well
as useful life, and he advises that they get out
into the country. When. six weeks ago, stand
ing in this place advocated, with all the energy
Icould command, the Saturday afternoon holt
day, did not think the people would so soon
get that release. By divine fat it has come, and
rejoice that more people will have opportunity
of recreation this summer than in any pre-
vious summer. Others will 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. Multtudes of our citizens are
packing their trunks for restorative absence.
The city heats are pursuing the people with
torch and fear of sunstroke. The long silent
halls of sumptuous hotels are all a-buzz with ex-
cited arrivals. The crystalline surface of Win
nipiseogee is shattered with the stroke of steam
ers laden with excursionists. The antlers of
sportsmen. The trout make fatal snaps at the
hooks of adroit sportsmen and toss their spotted
brilliance 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 rumbling of the ten pin
alley, and the crack Of the ivory balls on the
green baized billiard tables, and the jolting of
the bar-room goblets and the explosive uncork-
ing 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
inaugurated Music! Flute, and drum, and
cornet piston, and clapping cymbals will wake
the echoes of the mountains Glad 1 am that
fagged-out American life for the most part will
have an opportunity to rest and that nerves
racked and destroyed will find a Bethesda.
believe in watering places. Let not the com-
mercial firm begrudge the clerk, or the employer,
the journeyman, or the patient the physician, or
the church its pastor season of inoccupation.
Luther used to sport with his children; Edmund
Burke used to caress his favorite horse; Thomas
Chalmers, in the dark hour of the churchs dis
rupton, played kite for recreation-as l was
said to two busy apostles: "Come We apart
awhile into the desert and rest yourselves" And
1 have observed that they who do not know how
to rest do not know how to work.
WATERING PLACE DANGERS.
But have 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-
CALCULATIONS of this season and the prospect Of
the departure of many of you for the country, 1
must utter note of warning, plain, earnest and
unmistakable. The first temptation that is apt
to hover in this direction is to leave your piety
all at home. You will send the dog, and cat,
and canary bird to be we'll 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 then
you will come back in the autumn to find that it
is starved and suffocated, lying stretched on the
rug, stark dead. There is no surplus of piety at
the watering places l never knew any one to
grow very rapidly in grace at the Catskill
Mountain House. or Sharon Springs, or the
Falls of Montmorency. 1t is generally the case
that the Sabbath is more of a carousal than any
other day, and there are Sunday walks, and
Sunday rides, and Sunday excursions. Elders,
and deacons, and ministers of religion, who are
entirely consistent at home, sometimes, when
theSabbath dawns on them at Niagara Falls or
the White Mountains, take TIL, day to them
selves. If they go to the church it is apt to be a
sacred parade. and the DISCOURSE instead of being
a plain talk about the SOUL is apt to be what is
called crack sermon-that is, some discourse
picked out of the illusions of the year, as the
one most adapted to excite admiration; and in
those churches, from the way the ladies hold
their FANS you know that they are not so much
impressed with the heat as with the picturesque
ness of half disclosed features. Four puny souls
stand in the organ-loft and squeal tune that
nobody knows, and worshipers with two thou
sand dollars worth of diamonds on the right
hand drop cent into the poor.box and then the
benedcton is pronounced and the farce is ended.
The toughest thing I ever tried to do was to be
good at watering place.
The air is bewitched with 'the, world, the
flesh and the devil" There are Christians who
in three or four weeks, in such place, have had
such terrible rents made in their Christian robe
that they had to keep darning it until Christmas
TO get IL fnenueu! Iue uealtu Oh 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 secret prayer every day. though you
be surrounded by guffaw and saturnalia. Keep
holy the Sabbath, though they deride you as q
bigoted Puritan. Stand off from those nstitu-
tons which propose to initiate on this side the
water the iniquities of Baden Baden. Let your
moral and your immortal health keep pace with
your physical recuperation, and remember that
all the waters of Hathorne, and sulphur and
chalybeate springs cannot do you so much good
as the mineral, healing perennial food that
breaks forth from the "Rock of Ages This
may be your last summer. If SO, make it a fit
vestibule of heaven.
Another Temptation around nearly all our