The Penn's Grove record., 1899-08-25
VOLUME XIII.
DR.. TALMAGES SERMON.
SUNDAYS DISCOURSE Blythe NOTED
DIVINE
subject: Advice For the vacation-Take
the Bible Along-P1easure Seekers Ad-
m~ontshed Not to Leave Religion Be-
neutrality-suspicious. at Watering Places


the Bible AIong-Pleasure seekers Ad
monished Not to Leave Religion BE
neutrality-suspicious. at Watering Places
Copyright, Louis Klopsch, 1891
WASHINGTON, D. CT this season 0
the year, when ali who can get a vacation
are taking 1t, this discourse Of DR.. Tai
mage is suggestive and appropriate. The
text Is John ". Q, 8; "a pool, which 4
called In the Hebrew tongue Bethesda
having five porches. In these lay n great
multitude Of impotent folk, of blind, Lalt
withered, waiting for the moving of the
water"
Outside the city OF Jerusalem there wa
4 sanatiye watering place, the popular re-
sort for invallds. To this day there ls q
dry basin OF rock which shows that there
may have been a pool there 800 feet long
1870 feet wide and seventy-hve feet deep
This pool was surrounded by five piazzas
or porches, or bathing houses, where the
patients tarried until tho time when they
were to step into the water. So far as re
inauguration was concerned 1t must have
been a Saratoga and n Long Branch on q
small scale, a bennington and a Brighton
combined-medical n therapeutic. Ira
dillon says that at q certain season of the
year there was an officer of the govern
ment who would go down to that water and
pour In it some healing quality, and after
that the people would come and get the
medication, but I prefer the plain state
ment Of Scripture that at a certain season
an angel cam down n stirred up OF
troubled the water, 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
healing who in our day steps into the min
eral waters OF Congress, or Staron, or Sui
phur Springs, or into the salt sea at Cape
May and Nuhant, where multitudes who
are worn out with commercial and profes-
sional anxieties, as we'll as those who are
afflicted with rheumatic, neuralgia and
splenetic diseases, go and are cured by the
thousands. These blessed Bethesdas are
scattered all up and down our country.
We are at q season OF the year when rail
trains are laden with passengers and bag
gage on their way to the mountains and the
lakes and the seashore. Multitudes OF our
citizens are away for a restorative abb
sence. 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 Adirondack deer rattle under
the shot Of city sportsmen. The trout make
fatal snap at the hook of adroit sportsmen,
who toss their spotted b%rllliance into the
game basket. The baton of the orchestral
leader taps the music stand on the hotel
green, and American life has put 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 barroom goblets, and the ex-
ploslve uncorking Of the champagne bot
lies, and the whirl and the rustic OF the
ballroom dance, and the gathering hoofs
of the race course and other signs of social
dissipation attest that the season for the
great American watering place Is in full
play. Musicl Flute and drum and cornet-
a-piston and slapping cymbals wake the
na1,aap ~ tbn ~, A., ptotpo Glad IA ~ 7 thnt
tagged out American life for the most part
has an opportunity to rest and that nerves
racked and destroyed will find a Bethesda.
! believe in watering places. They
recuperate for active service many who
were worn out with trouble or overwork.
They are national restoratiyes. Let not
the commercial firm begrudge the clerk,
or the employer the journeyman, or the
patient the physician, or the church its
pastor, a season of i~noccupation. Luther
used to sport with his children; Edmn1i
3 X Il seq to cares ms %favorite horse;
Thomas Chalmers, In the dark hour of the
church's disruption, played kite for re-
treation-so 1 was told by his W dnugh-
ter-and the busy Christ said to the busy
apostles, Come ye apart awhile into the
desert and rest yourselves" And l 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 destruction OF "a
multitude hat 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 warn
ing, plain, earnest and unmistakable.
The first temptation that is apt to hover
Ia this direction is to leave your piety at
home. You will send the dog and cat and
canary bird to be well cared for somewhere
.1,.. I,k Nln ta,,ntnttNn will ha 70 Inn Va
YOU religion In the room with the blinds
down and the door bolted, and h you
will com back In the autumnto find that
1t is starved and sulrocated, lying stretched
on the rug stark dead. There is no sur
plus OF piety at the watering places. l
never knew any one to grow very rapidly
In grace at the Catskill Mountain House,
or Sharon Springs, or the Falls of Mont
morency. 1t is generally the case that the
Sabbath is more of q carousal than any
other day, and there are Sunday walks and
Sunday rides and Sunday excursions.
Elders and deacons and ministers OF reltg-
ion who are entirely consistent ut home,
sometimes when the Sabbath dawns on
them at Niagara Falls or the White Noun
tains, take a day to themselves. Ifthey &C
to the church, it is apt to be a sacred pa
rade, and the discourse, instead of being a
plain talk about the soul, Is apt to be
what is called q crack s~ermon--that is,
some discourse picked out of the illusions
of the year as the one most adapted to eX-
cite admiration, and in those churches,
from the way the aides hold their fans,
you know that they are not go much i'm
pressed with the heat as with the pie
~turesqueness OF half disclosed features.
Four puny souls stand In the organ loft
and squat a tune that nobody knows, and
worshipers with $4,000 worth OF diamonds
on the right hand drop a cent into the
poor box, and then the benediction is pro.
nounced, and the farce is ended. The
toughest thing l ever tried to do was to be
good at a watering place. The air is be-
witched with the "world, the flesh and the
devil" There are Christians who In three
Or four weeks In such Il place have had
such terrible rents made in their Chris
tian robe that they had to keep darning 1t
until Christmas to get it mended.
The health OF n great many people
makes an annual 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 guffaw and saturnalla.
Keep holy the Sabbath, though they deride
YOU as a bigoted Puritan. Stand of from
gambling bells and those other ins.itu-
tons which propose TO initiate on this SIDE
the water the iniquities OF Baden Baden.
Let you moral and your immortal health
keep pace with your physical reeuperation
and remember that all the sulphur and
chalybeate springs eannot do you so much
good as the healing, perennial food that
breaks forth from the Crock of Ages"
This may be your last summer. II so, make
1t n fit vestibule of heaven.
Another temptation lowering around
nearly all our watering places is the horse
racing business. We all admire the horse,
but we do not think that its beauty or speed
ought to be cultured at the expense OF hui
man degradation. The horse race is not
OF such Importance as the human race.
h RIhle intimntes TINT a man Is better