The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1899-08-25
SUMMER VACATIONS.
Or. Talmage Draws Some Lessons
from Our Annual Outings.
Dangers and Temptations That Sur
round Our Watering Places
Necessity of n Period of
TnOccupatiOn.
copyright, 1899, by Louis Klopsch.l
Wa aShinOtOn

Copyright, 1899. by Louis Klopsch.l
Washington,
At this season of the year, when all
who can get vacation are taking it
this discourse of DIR. Talmage is sug-
gestive and appropriate. The text is
John 5:2, 3: "a pool, which is called
in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having
| five porches. In these lay great multi
tude of impotent folk, of blind, halt,
withered, waiting for the moving of the
| water"
| Outside the city of Jerusalem there
was sanative watering place, the pop
ular resort for invalids. To this day
| there is a dry basin of rock which shows
that there may have been pool there
| 500 feet long, 130 feet wide and 75 feet
deep. This pool was surrounded by five
| 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, it must have been Sara
| toga and a Long Branch on small
scale; a bennington and Brighton
ombined-medical and therapeutic.
| Tradition says that at certain season
of the year there was an officer of the
government who would go down to that
water and pour in it some healing quail
ity, and after that the people would
come and get the medication. But L
prefer the plain statement of Scripture,
that at 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 and 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
Bethesdas are scattered all up and down
our country.
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.
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 Adiron-
dack deer rattle under the shot of city
spOrtsmen, the trout make fatal snap at
the hook of adroit sportsmen, who toss
their spotted brilliants into the game
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 greenbaized 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. I 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 his |
children; Edmund Burke used to caress |
his favorite horse; Thomas Chalmers, |
in the dark hour of the church's disrup- |
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 desert [
and rest yourselves" And l have OBJ
served that they who do not know how
20 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 destruc-
ion of "a multitude that no man can
and amid the congratulations
Of this season and the prospects of the
departure of many of you for the coun-
.ry l must utter warning, plain, ear
nest and unmistakable.
The first emptation that is apt to
lover in this direction is to leave your
Oiety at home. You will send the dog
md cat and canary bird to be well cared
Tor somewhere else, but the temptation
will be to leave your religion in the
'oom with the blinds down and the
loors bolted, and then you will come
Jack in the autumn to find that it is
starved and suffocated, lying stretched
IN the rug. stark dead. There is no sur
)lus of piety at the watering places.
lever knew anyone to grow very rapid
y in grace at the Catskill Mountain
ouse or Sharon Springs or the Falls of
iontmorency. 1t is generally the case
hat the Sabbath is more of carousal
han any other day, and there are Sun
lay walks, and Sunday rides, and Sun
ay excursions. Elders and deacons
nd ministers of religion who are en-
rely consistent at home, sometimes
7hen the Sabbath dawns on them at
iagara falls or the White mountains
AXE day to themselves. If they go
the church. it is apt to be a sacred
arade, and the discourse, instead of be-
ng plain talk about the soul. is apt to
e what is called a crack sermon-that
J, some discourse picked out of the eff
usions of the year as the one most /
daped to excite admiration, and in !