Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-08-04
RUIN TO THE SOUL.
Temptations Encountered at Fashion
able Watering Places,
THE MANY TRAPS SET BY SATAN,
lRte Which the Youthful and the Needless
Are Likely to Fall.
HoW TO REST WITHOUT SHINING
HE MANY TRAPS SET BY SATAN,
HeW 10 REST WITHOUT SHINING
nrrcrAL TELEGRAM 10 THE prsrLrcHL

timely topic for his sermon for to-day, in
the use and abuse of summer resorts. His
text is Mark vi:31: ''Come We yourselves
apart unto desert place and rest awhile. "
Following is the sermon:
Here Christ advises His apostles to take a
vacation. They have been living an excited as
well as a useful life and He advises that they
GET out into the country. I am glad that for
longer or shorter time, multitudes of our people
will have summer vacation The railway trains
are being laden with passengers and baggage
on their way to the mountains and the sea-
shore. Multitudes of our citizens are packing
their trunks for a restorative absence.
The city heats are pursuing the people with
torch and fear of sunstroke. The long, silent
halls of sumptuous hotels are all abuzz with
excited arrivals. The crystalline surface of
Winnipiseogee is shattered with the stroke Of
steamer. laden with excursonists. The antlers
Of Adirondack deer rattle under the shot of
CITY sportsmen. The trout make fatal snaps az
the hook of adroit sportsmen and toss their
spotted brilliance into the game basket. Al
ready the baton of the orchestral leader taps
the music stand on the hotel green and Ameri-
can life puts on festal array. and the rumbling
Of the tenpin alley, and the crack of the ivory
balls on the green-baized billiard tables and
the jolting of the bar-ruom goblets, and the e1-
plosIve uncorking of champagne bottles, and
tQe Whit ana the rustic OF the ballroom dance.
and the clatterlng hoofs of the race-courses
attest that the season for the great American
watering places is fairly inaugurated. Music
mute and drum and coTnet-a-pisron and clap
ping cynbals-will wake the echoes of the
mountains.
WATERING PLACE TEMPTATIONS.
Glad am that fagged-out American life for
the most part will have an opportunity to rest.
aud that nerves racked and destroyed will find
AZ
not the commercial firm begrudge the clerk. or
the employer the journeynsn. or the patient the
physician, or the church its pastor, a season Of
inoccupation. Luther used to sport with his
children; Edmund Burke used to caress his
fayorite horse: Thomas Chalmers in the dark
hours of the Church's disruption. played kite
for recreation-as v Is told by his own daugh-
ter-and the busy Christ said to the busy apos-
ties: Come ye 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 / have to declare this truth to-day, that
some of our fashionable watering places are TIE
temporal and eternal destruction of "a multi
tuoe that no man can number" and amid the
congratulations OF this season and the prospect
of the departure of many of you for the country
must utter note of warning-plain, earnest,
and unmistakable.
The tirst 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 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 then you will come back in the autumn to
ind that it is starved and suffocated lying
stretched on the rug stark dead. There is no
surplus OF plety at the watering places, /
never knew anyone to grow very rapidly in
grace at the fashionable summer resort 1t is
generally the case that the Sabbath is more OF
carousal than any other day, and there are
Sunday walks and Sunday rides and Sunday
excursions.
FORGOTTEN PROFESSIONS.
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 mad
such terrible rents made in their Christian
robe that they had to keep darning il until
Christmas to get it mended. The health of a
great many people makes an annual visit to
some mineral spring an absolute necessity; but
take your Bible along with you, and take an
hour for secret prayer every day, though you
be surrounded by gutfaw and saturnalia. Keep
holy the Sabbath. though they dsnounce you
as a bigoted Puritan. Stand of from these in
stitutions which propose to initiate on this side
the water the iniquities of olden-time Baden
Baden. Let your moral and your immortal
health keep pace with your physical recupera-
tion, and remember that all the waters of
Hathorne and sulphur and chalybeate springs
cannot do you SO much good the mineral,
healing perennial flood that breaks forth from
the Rock of Ages" This may be your last
summer. II 30, make il fit vestibule of
heaven.
Another temptation around nearly all our
watering places is the horse racing business.
We all admire the horse. There needs to be q
redistribution of coronets among the brute
creation. For ages the lion has been called the
king of beasts. knock of its coronet and put
the crown upon the horse, in every way obler,
whether in shape or spirit or sagacity, or intel
lgence. affection, or usefulness. He is semi
human, and knows how To reason on a small
scale. The centaur Of olden times. part horse
and part man, seems to be a suggestion of the
fact that the horse is something more than q
beast.
JOB sets forth his strength, his beauty his
majesty, the painting of his nostril. the paving
of his hoof. and his enthusiasm for the battle.
What Rosa Bonheur did for the CATTLE and
what Landseer did for the dog, job, with
mIghtier pencil, does for the horse. Eighty
eight times does the Bible speak of him. He
comes into every kingiy procession, and into
every great occasion and into every triumph.
1t is evident that Job and David and Isaiah
and Ezekiel and jeremiah and John were very
fond Of the horse. He came into much Of their
imagery. A red horse-that meant war; q
pale horse--that meant death; white horse
that meant victory
DEMORALIZED SPORT.
But we do not think that the speed of the
horse should be cultured at the expense of
human degradation. Horse races, in olden
times were under the ban of Christian people,
and in our day the same institution has come
mp under fictitious names. and 1t is called a
sumner Meeting" almost suggestive of posi-
tive religious exercises. And it is called an
Fair" suggestive of everything
that is improving in the art of farming. But
under these deceptive titles are the same cheat
ing and the same betting, the same drunken |
ness and the same vagabondage and the same
Nominations hat were to be found under the |
bid horse racing system.
never knew a man yet who could give him |
,elf to the pleasures Of the turf for long reach
H.
hook up their spanking team. and put on their |
porting cap, and light their cigar, and take the
-eins and dash down the road to perditioa. |
rhe great day at Saratoga, and Long Branch, |
md Cape May. and nearly all the other water /
ng places, is the day of the races. The hotels |
re thronged. nearly every kind of equipage In /
AIKEN up az an almost fabulous price, and there
ire many respectable people mingling with
ockeys, and gamblers, and hbertines, and foul
nouthed men and hsshy women. The barten-
Ter sttrs up the brandy smash. The bets run
high. The Ereenho-nt. supposing all is fair,
rhree weeks before the race takes place the
struggle is decided, and the men in the secret
know on which steed tO bet their money. The
swo men on the horses riding around long be-
Tore arranged who shall beat.
Leaning from the stand or from the carriage
are men and women SO absorbed in tie strug-
.le OF bone and muscle and mettle that they
make grand harvest for the pickpockets, who
larry on the pocket books and pOrtemonnaies.
Men looking on see only two horses with two
'ioers nylng around the ring: but there is many
! man on that stand whose honor and domestic
happiness and fortune-white name, white 1
'oot. white nank-are in the ring, racing with
nebriety, and with fraud, and with profanity,
ind with ruin-black neck, black foot, black
isnk. Neck and neck they go in that moral
EPSON.
A RUINoUs BUSINESS.
All, my friends have nothing to do with
rorse racing dissipauons this summer. Long
igo the English Government got through look
ne 70 the turf for the dragoon and ieht.caxaIrx