Republican news item. [volume] (Laport, Pa.) 1896-19??, 1899-09-21
DR. TALMAGES SERMON.
SUNDAYS DISCOURSE By THE NOTED
DIVINE

Subject: Advice For the vacation-Take
tho Bible Along-Pleasure Seekers Ad-
monished Not to Leave Religion Be-
hind-Temptations ut Watering Places.
Copyright. Louis Klopsch. 1891
WARRINGTON, D. Cat this season Of
the year, when all who can get a vacation
mage is suggestive and appropriate. The
te~t is John V. 2, 8: "a pool, which is
called in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda,
having five porches. In these lay great
multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt
withered. waiting for the moving OF the
water"
Outside the city OF Jerusalem there was
a sanative watering place, the popular re-
, sort for invalids. To this day there Is q
dry basin OF rock which shows that there
may have been q pool there 800 feet long,
1870 feet wide and seventy-flve feet deep.
or porches, or bathing houses, where the
patients tarried until the time when they
were to step into the water. So far as re-
invigoration was concerned 1t mu st have
been Saratoga and a Long Branch on a
small scale, bennington and Brighton
combined-medlcala and therapeutic. Ira
dition says that at a certain season Of tho
year there was an off3cer Of the govern
, ment who would go down to that water and
pour In 1t some healing quality, and after
that the people would come and get the
medication, but I prefer the plain state
ment of ofScripture that at certain season
an angel came down and stirred up or
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 Sharon, or Sui
phur Springs, or into the salt sea at Cape
May and Nahant, 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, 60 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 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 abuzs with excited arrivals. The
antlers Of Adirondack deer rattle under
fatal snap at the hook of adroit sport smen,
who toss their spotted 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
the green baized billiard tables, and the
jolting of the barroom goblets, and the eX-
plosive uncorking of the champagne bot
ties, 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. Music! Flute and drum and cornet-
a-piston and slapping cymbals wake the
echoes OF the mountains. Glad am l that
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 flor active service many who
were worn out with trouble or overwork.
They are national restoratives. Let not
the commercial firm begrudge the clerk,
or the employer the journeyman, or the
patient he physician, or the church its
pastor, 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 re-
creation-so l was told by his own daugh-
ter-and the busy Christ said to the busy
apostles, Come ye apart awhile into the
desert and rest yourselves" And 1 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
tempOIdl anu eteIudl Ol IL
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 warn
ing plain, earnest and unmistakabls.
The first temptation that Is apt to hover
IN this direction is to leave your ,piety ut
home. You will send the dog and cat and
canary bird to be we'll cared for somewhere
else; R1t 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
1t is starved and suffocated, 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 carousal than any
other day, and there are 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
them Mt Niagara Falls or the White Noun
tains, take day to themselves. Ifthey go
to the church. 1t Is apt to be sacred pa
rade, and the discourse, instead OF being a
plain talk about the soul, Is apt to be
what is called q crack SermOn--that Is,
some discourse picked out OF the effusions
of the year as the one most adapted to ex-
cite aQmlrRtlOD, ana IN tHOS6 clurcueS,
from the way the ladies hold their fans,
you know that they are not go much i'm
pressed with the heat as with the pic
turesquencss OF half disclosed features.
Four puny souls stand in the organ loft
and squall a tune that nobody knows, and
worshipers with $4,000 worth OF diamonds
on the right hand drop cent into the
poor box, and then the benediction is pro-
nounced, and the farce is ended. The
toughest thing ever tried to do was to be
good at 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 u place have had
such terrible rents made in their Chris
tian robe that they had to keep darning it
until Christmas to get it mended.
The health OF 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
secre. prayer every day, though YOU be
surrounded by guffaw and saturnalia.
Keep holy the Sabbath, though they deride
you rs bigoted Puritan. Stand of from
gambling hells and those other institu-
tions which propose to initiate on this side
the wnter the fniuufties of Bnden Raden