Martinsburg herald. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1881-1920, 1890-08-09
THE TALMAGE SERMON.
The Brooklyn Divine breaches on the
Summer Vacation"

The Brooklyn Divine breaches on the
Summer Vacation"
The Temptations That Are To BE Met
with al Summer Resorts.
TEXT: Come ne yourselves apart into
desert place and rest aphiie. Mark vi, 81.
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. am glad that
for longer or shorter time multitudes of our
people will have summer vacation. The rail-
way trains are being laden with passengers
and baggage on their way to the mountains
and the sea shore. Multtudes of our citi-
zens are packing their trunks for a restora-
tive 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 sur
face OF Winnipiseogee is shattered with the
stroke of steamer laden With excursionists.
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 tho
hotel green, and American life puts on festal
array, and the run bling of the tenpin alley,
baize billiard tables, and the jolting of the
bar-room goblets, and the explosive uncork-
ing of champagne bottles and the whirl anl
the rustic OF the ballroom dance and tho
Gathering hoofs of the raca courses attest
that the season for the great American
watering-place is fairly inauguratel.
oMusic-ilute and drum and eornet-a-piston
and clapping cymbals-will wake the echoes
Of the mountains.
Glad l am that tagged out American life
for the most part will have IN opportunity to
rest and that nerves raclIed and destroyed
will find Bethesda. | believe in watering
places. Let not the commercial firm be-
grudge the clerk, or the employer the jour-
neyman, or the patient the physician, or the
church its pastor a season of inoccupation.
Luther used to sport with his children; Ed
mund Burke used to caress his favorite horse;
Thomas Chalmers, in the dark hours of the
church's disruption, played kite for recrea
tomas / was told by his own daughter
and the busy Christ said to the busy apostles,
"Come We yourselves apart into a desert
place, and rest awhile" And | have OBJ
served 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 destruction OF
"a multitude 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 a note
| of warning-plain. earnest an unmistak-
able.
The first tempt alton that is apt to hover
in this direction is to leave your piety all at
home. You will send the dog aud cat and
canary bird TO be well carel Tor somewhere
else, but the temptation will he to leave
your religion in the room with the blinds
down and the door bolted, an | 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. mover knew
any one to grow very rapidly in graca at tho
| fashionable summer resort. 1t is generally
the case that the Sabbath is more Of a ca
rousal than any other day, AMI there are
Sunday walks and Sunday rides and Sunday
excursions
Elders and deacons and ministers Of rclig-
! ion who are entirely consistent at hom }
sometimes when the Sabbath dawns on them
! at Niagara Falls or tho White Mountains
take the day to themselves. IL they go TO the
! church, it is apt to be q sacred parade, ami
I the discourse, instead Of being plain talk
| about tho soul, is apt TO be what is called a
I crack sermon-that is, some discourse picket
out of the illusions Of tho year as the ono
most adapted 70 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
| picturesqueness of half disclosed featur S.
| -Four puny souls stand in tho organ lott and
squall tune that nobody knows, and wor-
shippers, with two thousand dollars worth of
diamonds on the right hand, drop cent
| into the poor box, and then the benelic-
| ton 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 a place
have had such terrible rents made in their
! Christian robe that they had to keep darning
! it until Christmas to get it mended! The
health of great many people makes an an
nual 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 gufrlw
and saturnalia. Keep holy the Sabbath,
though they denounce you as bigolel Pnri-
tan. Stand off rom 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 re-
member that all the waters of Hathorne and
sulphur and chalybeate springs cannot do
you so much good as the mineral, healing,
perennial flood that breaks forth from the
''Rock of Ages" This may be your last SUN
mer. 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
redistribution of coronets anon The brute
creation. For ages the lion has been called
the mug OF beasts. L knock of its coroaet
ana put the crown upon the horse, in every
way nobler, whether in shape or spirit or
sagacity or intelligence or affection or u; Sc
tulness. lie is semt-human, AMI knows how
70 reason on small scale. The csntIur of
olden times, part horse and part man, seems
10 be suggestion of the fact that the horse
Is something more than n Last
but We 10 not think that the speed of the
horse should be cultured at the expense of
human de5ra1atiol. Horse races in oldsa
times were under the ban of Christian peo-
pie, ami In our day the same institution has
come up under fictitious names and it is
called a summer mesting,n almost slrga,
i've OF positive religious exerci seS. Audit
Is called an agricultural fair" suggestive
oil everything that is improving in the art OF
farming. But under these deceptive titles
are the same chelting AMI the same bettiny
the same drunkenness aud slme vaga5onl-
age, aud tho same denominations that were
TO be found under the old horse racing sys-
tom.
never knew man yet who could give
himself to the pleasures Of the turf for a
long reach Of time and not be battered in
morals They hook up their spanking team,
and put on their sporting cap and light their
cigar, and take the reins aud dash down the
f~aH'N'NAa
toga and Long Branch aud Cape May, and
nearly all the other Watering places is the
day of the races. The hotels are thron red
nearly every kind of equipagois taken up at
an almost fabulous price, AMI there are
many respectable people mingling with
jockeys and gamblers aud libertines and
loul-moutaed men aud hashv women. The
bar tender stirs up tho brandy smash. The
bets run high. The greenhorns, su9posing
all is fair, put in their money soon enough
TO lose it. Three weeks before the race
takes place tho struggle is decided, an the
mon in the secret know on which steed to
bet their money. The two men on the horse;
riding around long before arranged who shall
beat
Leaning from the stand or from the car
riage are men and women so absorbed in the
struggle of bone and muscle an mettle that
thov make grand harvest for the pick
pockets, who carry off the pocketbooks aud
portmonnaies. Men looking on see only two