Akron daily Democrat. [volume] (Akron, Ohio) 1892-1902, 1899-08-25
TAKE A BIBLE ALONG.
DR.. TALMAeE OIscoURSES ON SUM-
MER VACATIONS.

Admonishes the Pleasure Seekers
Not to Leave Religion Behind.
Temptations Abound at Watering
Places.
[Copyright, Louis Klopsch, 1891
WASHINGTON, Aug. 20.-At this sea-
son of the year, when all who can get
3 vacation are taking it, this discourse
of DIR. Talmage is suggestive and ap-
propriate. The text is John Y, :, 3: A
pool, which is called in the Hebrew
tongue Bethesda, having five porches.
In these lay 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 a dry basin of rock which
shows that there may have been q
pool there 360 feet long, 130 feet wide
and 70 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
Brighton combined-medical and thera-
peutic Tradition says that at a 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 GER
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 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 anzieties, as well
as those who are afflicted with rheu-
matte, neuralgic 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 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 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 un-
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 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 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 oppor-
tunity to rest and that nerves racked
and destroyed will find a Bethesda.
believe in watering places. They
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, season
Of inoccupation. Luther used to sport
with his children; Edmund Burke used
10 caress his favorite horse; Thomas
Chalmers, in the dark hour of the
church's disruption. played kite for
/ was told by his own
the busy Christ said to
the busy apostles. Come We apart
awhile into the desert and rest your
selves" And | have observed that |
they who do not know how to rest do
not know low 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- |
Der," and amid the congratulations of |
this season and the prospect of the de-
Darture of many of you for the country
must utter a warning, plain, earnest |
md unmistakable.
Take Piety Along.
The first temptation that is apt to |
hover in this direction is to leave your
Diety at home. You will send the dog |
and cat and canary bird to be well
cared for somewhere else, but the |
will be to leave your re-
igion in the room with the blinds
lown and the door bolted, and then
you will come back in the autumn to