Lewiston teller. [volume] (Lewiston, North Idaho) 1878-1900, 1890-08-21
SINSAT SUMNER RESORTS
WEAKNESSES AND FOLLiES OF
IDLE PLEASURE SEEKERS.
Rev. 7. De Witt Tslmage Roundly Scores Wicked
Practices Of Visitors to 'sThe Seaside
and ''The Sprinss-A Mixture Of
Gamblers snd ROues.


sermon for last Sunday, in the use and
abuse of summer resorts. His text was
Mark g. 81: 'Come We yourselves apart
unto desert place and rest awhile" Fol
lowing is the sermon:
Here Christ advises His apostles to take
a vacation. They have been living an ex-
cited as we'll as useful life and He advises
that they get out into the country. / am
glad that for longer or shorter time, null
titudes of our people will have summer va
cation. The railway trains are being laden
with passengers and baggage on their way
to the mountains and the sea-shore. Multi
tudes 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
oil abuzz with excited arrivals. The crys-
talline surface of Winnipiseogee is shat
tered with the stroke of steamer, laden
with excursionists. The antlers of Adj
rondack deer rattle under the shot OF city
sportsmen. The trout make fatal snaps at
the hook Of adroit sportsmen and toss
their spotted brilliance into the game
basket Already the baton Of the orches-
trail 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 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 inaugurated. Music--f1ute and drum
and cornet-a-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 de-
stroycd will find q Bethesda. 1 believe in
watering places Let not the commercial
firm bcgrudge the clerk, or the employer
the iourneyman, or the patient the physi-
clan, 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 hours of the Church's disruption.
played kite for recreatiOn-as 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 have to declare this truth to-day.
that some of our fashionable watering
places are the temporal and eternal de-
struction of "a multitude that no man can
number" and amid the congratulations of
this season and the prospect of the depart
ure of many of you for the country 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 well cared for somewhere
else; but the temptation will be to leave
your religion in the room with 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 in
the watering-places. l never knew any
one to grow very rapidly in grace at the
fashionable summer resort. 1t is generally
the case that the Sabbath is more of q ca
rousal than any other day, and there are
! Sunday walks and Sunday rides and Sun
day excursions.
Elders and deacons and ministers of
religion, who are entirely consistent ut
home, sometimes when the Sabbath dawns
on them at Niagara Falls or the White
Mountains take the day to themselves. II
they go to the church, it is apt to be sa-
cred parade, and the discourse, instead of
being plain talk about tho soul, IS apt to
be what is called crack sermon-that is,
some discourse that is picked out of the
effusions 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 they are not half so much
impressed with the heat as with the pictu.
resqueness of half-disclosed features,
Four puny souls stand in the organ loft
| and squall tune that nobody knows, and
worshippers, with two thousand dollars
worth of diamonds on the right hand, dror
cent into the poor-box and then the ben.
ediction is pronounced and the farce is
ended.
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 darn
ing it until Christmas to get it mended
The health of great many people make.
an annual visit to the spring an absolute
necessity; but, take your Bible along with
you, and take an hour for secret PRAYER
every day, though you be surrounded b,
guffaw and saturnalia. Keep holy tn,
Sabbath, though they denounce you as ;
bigoted Puritan. Stand of from these in
situations which propose to initiate on thi
side the water the iniquities of olden-tim,
Baden Baden. Let your moral and you
immoral health keep pace with your physi
cal recuperation, and remember that all tn,
waters of Hathorne and sulphur and chaly
beate springs can not do you so much goo,
as the mineral, healing, perennial food tina
breaks forth from the "Rock of Ages.
This may be your last summer. If so, max,
It fit vestibule Of heaven.
Another temptation around nearly all GU
watering places is the horse racing buiness
We all admire the horse. There needs 4
be redistribution Of coronets among tn
brute creation. For ages the lion has beeJ
called the king Of beasts. I knock of it
coronet and pc: the crown upon the horse
in every way nobler, whether in shape O
spirit or sagacity or intelligence or affectio,
or usefulness He is semi-human, an
! knoVs-S how IN ran Ou IN a ANAL c,,l,