Connecticut western news., 1899-08-24
TAKE A BIBLE ALONG.
DIR. TALMAG1 DlscoURSES ON SUM
 MFR VACATIONS.

Places.
 ICopyright. Louis Klopsch. 1S99.l
 WASHINGTON, Aug. 20.-At this sea son of the year, when all who can get vacation are taking 1t, this discourse propriate. The text is John V, ?, 5: "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 sanative watering place, the popular resort for invalids. To this / day there Is dry basin of rock which shows that there may have been q pool there 360 feet long, 130 feet wid0 and 15 feet deep. This pool was sur rounded by five piazzas, or porches, or bathing houses, where the patients taf- ried until the time when they were ts step into the water So far as rein- vigoration was concerned 1t must have been Saratoga and Long Branch ba a small scale, a bennington and n Brighton combined-medical and them peutic. Tradition says that at eaii- tain season of the year there was lln officer of the government who wou0 go down to that water and pour In N some healing quality, and after thn4 the people would come and get ths medication, but I prefer the plain statement of Scripture that at cef- tain season an angel came down and stirred up or troubled the water, and then the people came and go. 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 Sul- phur Springs, or into the salt sea at Cape May and Nahant, where multi tudes who are worn out with comlner- cial and professional anxieties, ss we'll as those who are afflicted with rheu- matic, neuraldc and splenette djs-i eases, go and are cured by the the n sands. These blessed Bethesdas are scattered all up and down our county.
 The Vacation Season.
 We are at a season of the year wh n rail trains are laden with passengy fs and baggage on their way to the rnos p-, tains and the lakes and the seasho E. Multitudes of our citizens are ave v for a restorative absence. The cj V heats are pursuing the people wi ih torch and fear of sunstroke. The loI B, silent halls of sumptuous hotels are III abuzz with excited arrivals. Tle antlers of Adirondack deer rattle tp- der the shot of city sportsmen. Tae trout make fatal snap at the hook of adroit sportsmen, who toss their spot- 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 on the green baized billiard ta- bles, 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 clattering 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 skipping cym- bals wake the echoes of the mountains. Glad am that Jagged out American life for the most part has an oppor- tunity to rest and that nerves racked and destroyed will find a Bethesda. l 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 paseor, . 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 I was told by his own daughter-and the busy Christ said to the, busy apostles, Come ye apart awhile into the desert and rest your selves" And I 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 congratulations 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 Ptety 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 we'll 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 1t Is starved and suffocated,T lying stretched on the rug stark dead. There Is no surplus of piety at the wa tering places. I never knew any one. to grow very rapidly in grace at the Catskin Mountain House, or Sharon Springs, or the Falls of Montmorency. It Is generally the case that the Sab bath Is more of carousal than any other day. and there are Sunday walks and Sunday rides and Sunday excur- sions. Elders and deacons and minis ters of religion who are entirely con- sistent at home, sometimes when the Sabbath dawns on them at Niagara Falls or the White mountains, take a day to themselves. If they go to the church, it Ia apt to be sacred parade, and the discourse, instead of being . plain talk about the soul, Is apt to be what Is called a crack sermon-that is, some discourse picked out of the ef- fusiOns of the year as the one most adapted to excite admiration, and in those churches, from the way the ladies hold their fans, you know that they are not so much impressed with the heat as with the picturesqueness of half disclosed features. Four puny souls stand in the organ loft and squall a tune that nobody knows, and wor- shipers with $2,OOO worth of diamonds on the right hand drop a cent into the poor box, and then the benediction is ha fo fc dad