The Middleburgh post. [volume] (Middleburgh, Snyder Co., Pa.) 1883-1916, 1899-09-21
SUMNER VACATIONS.
Dr.. Talmage Draws Some Lessons
from Our Annual Outings.
Dangers and Temptations Tint Sur
round Our Watering Places
Necessity of a Period Of
InOccupatiOn.
Copyright. 1899. by Louis Klopsch.l

copyright, 1899, by Louis Klopsch.1
Washington. Aug. 20
At this season of the year, when all
who can get vacation are taking it,
this discourse of DR.. Talmage is sug-
gestive and appropriate. The text is
John $50, 3: A pool, which is called
in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having
five porches. In these lay n great multi
tudc of impotent folk, of blind, halt,
withered, waiting for the moving OF the
water"
/ Outside the city of Jerusalem there
was u sanative watering place, the pop
ular resort for invalids. To this day
there is dry basin of rock which shows
! that there may have been pool there
3GO feet long, 130 feet wide and 10 feet
deep. This pool was surrounded by hve
piazzas, or porches, or bathing houses,
where the patients tarried until the
! time when they were to step into the
water. So far as reinvigorating was
concerned, il must have been Sara
toga and u Long Branch on small
scale; bennington and Brighton
| ombined-medical and therapeutic.
/ Tradition says that at n certain season
of the wear there was an officer OF the
government who would go down to that
water and pour in it some healing quail
,ty, and after that the people would
come and get the medication. But l
prefer the plain statement OF Scripture,
that at n certain season an angel came
down and stirred up or troubled the wa
ter and then the people came and got
the healing. That angel of God that
stirred up the Judaean watering place
had his counterpart in the angel OF heal
ing who, in our day, steps into the min
eral waters of Congress or Sharon or
Sulphur Springs, or into the salt sea at
Cape May ard Nahant, where multitudes
who are worn out with commercial and
professional anxieties, as well as those
who are afflicted with rheumatic, neu-
ralgic and splenetic diseases, go and are
cured by the thousands. These blessed
Bethesdasare scattered all up and down
our country.
We are at season of the year when
rail trains are laden with passengers
and baggage on their way to the noun
tains and the lakes and the seashore.
Multitudes of our citizens are away for
n 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 antlers of Adiron.
dack deer rattle under the shot OF city
sportsmen, the trout make fatal snap at
ho9 sbStta ct ad59 who os.
basket; the baton of the orchestral lead
er taps the music stand on the hotel
green, and American life has put 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 barroom goblets
and the explosive uncorking of the
champagne bottles, and the whirl and
the rustic of the ballroom dance, and
the Gathering hoofs of the race courses
and other signs of social dissipation at
test that the season for the great Amer
lean watering places is in full play
Music! Flute and drum and cornet-a
piston and clapping cymbals wake the
echoes OF the mountains. Glad am
that fagged-out American life for the
most part has an opportunity to rest
and that nerves racked and destroyed
will find a Bethesda. believe in water
ing places. They recuperate for active
service many who were worn out with
trouble or overwork. They are nation
al restoratives.
Let not the commercial firm begrudge
the clerk, or the employer the journey
man, or the patient the physician, or the
church its pastor season of inoccupa
ton. Luther used to sport with hi:
children; Edmund Burke used to cares.
his favorite horse; Thomas Chalmers
ton, played kite for recreation-so
was told by his own daughter-and the
busy Christ said to the busy apostles
Come ye apart awhile into the deser
and rest yourselves" And I have OBJ
served that they who do not know how
! W ItSJ uo HOU hUOW uO" 10 NoTk. bu
have to declare this truth to-day-that
some OF our fashionable watering place:
are the temporal and eternal destruc
ton of "a multitude that no man car
number" and amid the congratulation.
of this season and the prospects of tn,
departure of many of you for the coun
try l must utter a warning, plain, ear
nest and unmistakable.
The first emptation that is apt tt
hover in this direction is to leave you
piety at home. You will send the dos
and cat and canary bird to be well caret
for somewhere else, but the temptation
will be to leave your religion in th'
room with the blinds down and tn,
doors bolted, and then you will com'
back in the autumn to find that it il
starved and suffocated, lying stretched
on the rug. stark dead. There is no sur
plus of piety at the watering places.
never knew anyone to grow very rapid
ly in grace at the Catskill Mountain
house or Sharon Springs or the Falls o
Montmorency. 1t is generally the cast