The Camden journal. [volume] (Camden, S.C.) 1866-1891, 1890-08-21
THE TALMAGE SERMON.
The Brooklyn Divine breaches on the
Summer Vacation"
The Temptations That Are To BE Met
With Mt Summer Resorts.

TEXT: Come yc yourSclres apart into
9eSert place and rest urhile" Mark vi, 81.
Here Christ advises His apostles to take
vacation. They have been living an excited
as well as q 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. Multitudes Of our citi-
zens are packing their trunks for 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 adrot SportSman
and toss their spotted brilliance into tho
game basket. Already the baton OF the
orchestral leader taps the music stand on tho
hotel green, and American life puts on feStai
array, and the run bling of the tcnpin alley,
and the crack of the ivory balls on the green
baizc billiard tables and the ioltinS of the
bar-room goblets, and the explosive urcork-
ing of champagne bottles, and the whirl and
the rustic Of the ballroom dance and tho
Gathering hoofs of the race courses attest
that the season for the great American
watering-places is fairly inaugurateI.
Music-lute and drum and cornet-a-plston
and clapping cymbalS-will wake the echoes
of the mountains.
Glad / am that tagged out American lifc
for the most part will have an opportunity to
rest. and that nerves racked and destroyed
will find q Bethesda. believe in watering
places. Let not the commercial firm be-
prudgc the clerk, or the employer the jour-
ncyman, or tho patient the physician, or tho
church its pastor season of lnoccupation.
Luther used to sport with his children; Ed
mund Burke used to caress his favorite horse;
Thomas Chalmers, in the dark hours Of tho
church's disruption, played kite for recrca
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
arc 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 l must utter a note
of warning-plain, earnest AMI unmistak-
able.
The irst temptation that is apt to hover
in this direction is to leave your piety all at
home. You wilt 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 never knew
any one to grow very rapidly in grace at tho
fashionable summer resort 1t is generally
thecase that the Sabbath is moro Of q ca
rousal than any other day, and there arc
Sunday walks and Sunday rides and Sunday
excursions.
Elders and deacons and ministers Of relig.
ion who are entirely consistent at home
sometimes when the Sabbath dawnS on theul
at Niagara Falls or the White Mountains
take the day to themselves. If they 60 to the
church, it is apt to be q sacred parade, and
the DISCOURSE instead Of being plain talk
about the soul, is apt to be what is called q
crack sermon-that is some discourse pickod
out Of the effusions Of the year as tho ono
most adapted 90 excite admiration: and in
those churches, from the way the ladies hold
their FANS you know they oro not half so
much impressed with tho heat as with tho
picturesqueneSs of half disclosed featur S.
J -Four pnny souls stand in the organ loft and
sauall tune that nobody knows aud wor-
slippers, with two thousand dollars worth Of
diamonds on the right hand drop cent
into the poor box, and then the bcncdic-
tion is pronounced and the farce is ende:l.
The air is bewitched with "the world, the
flesh and the devil" There arc Christians
who in three OF four weeks in such q 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 gufftw
and saturnalia. Keep holy the Sabbath,
though they denounce you as q bigoted Puri-
tan. Stand off from these institutions which
propose to initiate on this side tho water the
iniquities of olden time Baden-Baden. Let
your moral and your immortal health keep
pace with your physicalrecuperat:on, 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
Crock of Ages" This may bo Your last sum
mer. If so, make it O tit veStibule of
heaven.
Another temptation around nearly oil 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 hing OF beasts. I knock OF its coronet
and put the crown upon the horse, in every
way no5ler, whether in shape or spirit or
sagacity or intelligence or affection or use
fulness. He is semi-human, and knows how
TO reason on small scale. The centaur Of
olden times, part horse and part man, seems
to be suggestion of the fact that the horse
Is something more than beast.
But we do not think that the spaei OF the
horse should be cultured at the cxp,ns, Of
human degradation. HORSE races in oll,n
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
cai'eu q summer meeting" almost saSges.
tive OF positive religion; exercises. hrlit
Is callel an agricultural fair" suggestive
OF everything that is improving in the art OF
farming. But under these deceptive titles
arc the samo cheating and the slmo b,tting,
tho same drunkenness and sumo vagabond-
agc, and the 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
long reach Of time and not be battered in
morals They hook up their spanking team,
aud put on their sporting cap, and light their
cigar, and take tho reins and dash lowa tho
roau 10 perdition. Tho great day at Sara
toSa and Long Branch and Cape May aud
ncarly ell tho other watering places, is tho
day Of the races. The hotels arc thron red,
nearly every kind Of oQuipago is taken up at
an almost fabulous price, aul there arc
many respectable pco1lo minglinc with
Jockeys and gamblers all lb3rtinas and
toul-:nouthed men aud nashy women. Th,
bar tender stirs up tho brandy smash The
bets run high. The greenhorns, supposins
NIL is fair, put in their money soon enough
to lose it. Three weeks before tho race
takes place tho strLSglo is decided, anl tho
men in the secret know on which steod to