Wessington Springs herald. (Wessington Springs, Aurora County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1883-1891, 1890-08-08
THE WATERING PLACES.
SUBJECT OF DIR. TALMAcEs
SERMON ON SUNDAY.

ne declares That They Arc Full of the
Most Destructive Influences, and Warns
All Mon and Women TO Beware of the
Shares of Vacation Time.
BROOKLYN, Aug. 3.--Comc We your
selves apart into desert place. and rest
awhilc.-Mark vi. 81.
Here Christ advises His apostles to
take vacation. They have been living
an excited as we'll as useful life. and He
advises that they get out into the conn
Try. am glad that for longer or shorter
time multitudcs of our people will have
summer vacation. The railway trains
are being laden with passengers and bag
gage on their way to the mountains and
tho scashorc. Multitudcs of our citizens
are packing their trunks for q 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 cNcursionists. The antlers
OF Adirondack 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
orchestral leader taps the music stand on
the hotel green and American life puts
on 1estal array. and the rumbling of the
tenpln alley. and the crack of the ivory
pals on the green baize billiard tables
ana the jolting of the bar-room goblets.
and the explosive uncorkng of cham
payne bottles. and the whirl and the
rustic OF the ball room dance, and the
Gathering hoofs of the race courses at
test that the season for the great Amer-
can watering places is fairly inaugurated.
Music-fiute and drum and cornet-a-pis-
ton and clapping cymbals-wil wake the
echoes OF the mountains.
Glad / am that tagged out American
lie, for the most part, will have an OPP
portunity to rest, and that nerves racked
and destroyed will find q Bethesda. /
believe in watering places. Let not the
commercial firm begrudge the clerk, or
the employer the journcyman, 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 carcss his favorite horse:
Thomas Chalmers. in the dark hours OF
the chnrch's disruption. played kite fol
recreation-as l was told by his own
daughter-and the busy Christ said tc
the busy apostles, "Come yc yourselves
apart into a desert place, and resi-
awhile" 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 congratula
lions of this season and the prospect OF
the departure of many of you for thu
country L must utter note of warming
plain, earnest, and unmistakable.
The first temptation that is apt t,
hover in this direction is to leave you
piety all at home. You will send tn
dog and cat and canary bird to be wei
cared for somewhere else, but the temp
tation will be to leave your religion i
the room, with the blinds down and tn
door bolted, and then you will come bac
In the autumn to find that it is starve,
and suffocated, lying stretched on til,
rug stark dead. There is no surplus O
piety at the watering places. never
knew any one to grow very rapidly il
grace at the fashionable summer resort
1t is generally the case that the Sabbath
is more of a carousal than any other day
and there are Sunday walks, and Sunda.
rides, and Sunday excursions.
Elders and deacons and ministers o
religion who are entirely consistent a
home, sometimes when the Sabbath
dawns on them at Niagara Falls or thu
White Mountains take the day to them
selves. If they go to the church it il
APT to be sacred parade, and the dis
course, instead of being a plain tall
about the soul, is apt to be what is called
crack sermon-that is, some discourse
picked out of the illusions of the yeal
as the one most adapted to excite admir-.
alton; and in those churches, from tho
way ladies hold their fans, you know
that they are not SO much impressed with
the heat as with the picturesqueness OF
half disclosed features. Four puny
souls stand in the organ loft and squat
tune that nobody knows, and worship
ers with two thousand dollars worth OF
diamonds on the right hand drop q cent
into the poor box, and then the benedic
ton is pronounced and the farce is
ended.
The air is bewitchcd with ssthe world
the flesh and the devil" There are
Christians who in three or four weeks in
in such place have had such terrible
rents made in their Christian robe that
they had to keep darning it until Christ
mas to get it mended! The health of a
great many people makes an annual visit
to some mineral spring an absolute ne
cessity; but 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 denounce you as a
bigotcd Puritan. Stand off from these
institutions 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 recuperation, and remem-
Der that all the waters of Hathorne and
| sulphur and cha lybeate springs can
not do you so much good as the mineral,
healing, perennial flood that breaks forth
from the Crock of Ages" This may be
your last summer. If SO, make it a 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 a redistribution of
coronets among the brute creation. For
ages the lion has been called the king of
beasts I knock off its coronet and put
the crown upon the horse, in every way