The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1899-08-25
TAKE A BIBLE ALONG,
DIR. TALMAGE DISCOURsES ON SUM
MER VACATIONS
~<dmonishes the Pleasure ecker not
TO Leave Religion Eehind-Temp.
tatiOns Abound at Watering Places

tatiOns Abound at Watering Places
Copyright, Louis Klopsch, 1897
At this season of the year, when all
who a get a vacation are taking it,
this discourse Of DR.. Talmage is sug-
gestive and appropriate. The text is
John V, 2, 8: "A pool, which is called
in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, hav-
ing fve porches. In these lay a great
multitude Of impotent folk, of blind,
halt, withered, waiting for the NOV
ing of the water"
Outside the city of Jerusalem there
was a %sanative watering place, the
popular resort for invalids. To this
day there is a dry basin Of rock which
shows that there may have been a
pool there $50 feet long, $50 feet wide
and Is feet 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
vigOration was concerned it must have
been a Saratoga and a Long Branch on
a small scale, a bennington and a
Brighton combined-medical and thera-
peutic. Tradition says that at a GER
ain season Of the year there was an
officer of the government 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 l prefer the plain
statement of Scripture that at a GER
tain season an angel came down and
stirred up or troubled the water, n
then the people came and got the heal
ing. That angel of God that stirred up
the udaean watering place a 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
cial 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.
I'VE are at season of the year
when rail trains are laden with passen-
gers and baggage or their way to the
mountains and the lakes n the sea-
shore. 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 sumptous 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
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 IN the green baiZed billiard ia
bles, and the jolting of the baTroom
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 l that tagged out American
life for the most part has an oDDor-
tunity to rest and that nerves racked
and destroyed will find a Bethesda.
1 believe in watering places. They
~recuperate for active service many
overwork. They are national restora-
tives. Let not the commercial firm be-
grudge the clerk, or the employer the
j~ourneyman, or the patient the physi-
clan, or the church it's pastor, a season
of inoccupation. Luther used to Sport
Will HIS DoA SNo
to caress his favorite horse; Thomas
Chalmers, in he 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 We 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 l have to
declare this truth today that some OF
our fashionable watering places are
the temporal and eternal ~
"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
1 must utter a warning, plain, earnest
n unmistakable.
TAKE PIETY ALONG.
The first temptation that is apt tc
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 Their
: you will come back in the autumn to
find thai it is starved and s~uffocated.
lying stretched on the rug stark dead
There is no surplus of piety at the wa
tering places. 1 never new any one
to grow very rapidly in grace at the
CatSkll mountain house, or sharon
Springs, or the Falls of Montmorency
1t is generally the case hat the SAX
bath is more of a carousal than any
other day, and there are Sunday walks
and Sunday rides and Sunday excur'
sions. Elders and deacons and minis.
tiers 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 is apt to be a sacred parade
and the discourse, instead of being
plain talk about the soul, is apt to bs
what is called a crack sermon-that is
some discourse picked out of the eff
fusions Of the res as the one mos
adapted to excite admiration, and IL
those churches, from the way tht
aides hold their hats, you know thai
they are not so much impressed with
The heat as with the picturesqueness
of half disclosed features. Four puma
SOI1S stand in fha aro-o n-loft md CC1Ial