Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1899-08-21

Places.
copyright, Louis Klopsch. 1891
WASHINGTON, Aug. 2O-At this sea-
son of the year, when all who can get
a vacation are taking it, this discourse
of Dr. Talmage is suggestive and ap-
propriate. The text is John V, z, 3: A
pool, which is called in the Hebrew
tongue Bethesda, having five porches.
In these lay a great multitude OF i'm
potent folk, of blind, halt, withered,
waiting for the moving of the water.
Outside the city of Jerusalem there
was a sanatiye watering place, the
popular resort for invalids. 10 this
day there is a dry basin of rock which
shows that there may have been
pool there $50 feet long, 40 feet wide
and 75 fees deep. This pool was sur
rounded by five piazzas, or porches, or
bathing houses, where the patients tar
ried until the time when they were to
step into the water. So far as rein
yigoration was concerned it must have
been a Saratoga and a Long Branch on
q small scale, a bennington and a
Brighton combined-medical and thera-
peutic. Tradition says that at GER
tain season of the year there was an
officer of the government 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 l prefer the plain
statement of Scripture that at a GER
tain season an angel came down and
stirred up or troubled the water, and
then the people came and goC the heal
ing 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 mineral
waters of Congress, or Sharon, or Sui
phur Springs, or into the salt sea at
Cape May and Nahant, where multi
tudes who are worn out with CONNER
ciaI and professional anxieties, as we'll
as those who are afflicted with rheu-
matte, neuralgia and splenetic dis
eases, go and are cured by the thou
sands. These blessed Bethesdas are
scattered all up and down our country.
The Vacation Season.
We are at a 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 a 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 Adirondack deer rattle I'M
der the shot of city sportsmen. The
trout make fatal snap at the hook Of
hi,
ted brilliance 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 OF the green baiZed billiard ia
bles, ana 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
course and other signs Of social dis
sipation attest that the season for the
great American watering places is in
full play. Music! Flute and drum
and cornet-a-piston and slapping Gym
balls wake the echoes of the mountains
Glad am I that tagged out American
life for the most part has an OppOr-
tunity 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 restora-
tives. Let not the commercial firm be-
grudge the clerk, or the employer the
journeyman, or the patient the physi-
clan, or the church its pastor, a season
of inoccupation. Luther used to sport
with his children; : Edmund Burke used
to caress his favorite horse; Thomas
Chalmers, in the dark hour of the
church's disruption, played kite for
recreation-so / was told by his own
daugbter-and the busy Christ said to
the busy apostles, Come We apart
awhile into the desert and rest your
selves" 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 today that some Of
our fashionable watering places are
the temporal and eternal destruction Of
"a multitude that no man can num-
ber," and amid the ngratulations Of
this season and the prospect of the de-
parture of many of you for the country
I must utter a warning, plain, earnest
and unmistakable.
Take Piety Along.
The first temptation that is apt to
hover in 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 else, but the
temptation will be to leave your re-
ligion 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.