The Iola register., 1899-08-25
SUMNER VACATIONS.
DR.. Talmage Draws Some Lessons
from Our Annual Outings.
Dangers and Temptations That Sur
round Our Watering Places
Necessity of Period of
InOccupntiOn.
copyright, 1899, by Louis Klopsch.l
WASHINGTON, Aug. 20.

gcstive and appropriate. Inc text Is
John 5:2, 3: "a pool, which is called
in the Hebrew tongue Bethesda, having
five porches. In these lay a 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 dry basin of rock which shows
that there may have been pool there
$50 feet long, 13O feet wide and 10 feet
deep. This pool was surrounded 10y five
piazzas, or porchcs, or bathing houses,
where the patients talried until the
time when they were to step into the
water. SO far as rcinyiporating was
concerned, it must have been a Sara
toga and Long Branch ON small
scale: bennington and brighton
combined-mcdical 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
itv. and after that the people would
come and get the medication. But |
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 ana 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 Mayand 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, 90 and are
cured by the thousands. These blessed
/ Bcthesdasare scattered all up and down
| our country.
| We are at n 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,
/ Nlultitudes of our citizens are away for
/ a restorative absence. The city heats
are pursuing the people with torch and
fear of suustrokc. The long, silent halls
of sumptuous hotels are all abuz2 with
excited arrivals. The antlcrs of Adiron-
dacll 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 green-baiZed billiard tables
and the iolting 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 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
anu that nerves racked and destroyed
will find Bethesda. | believe in water
ing places. They recuperate for active
service many who were worn out will
trouble or overwork. They are nation
al restoratives.
Let not the commercial firm begrudg'
the clerk, or the employer the journey
man, or the patient the physician, or the
church its pastor a season of inoccupa
ton. Luther used to sport with hi
children Edmund Burke used to cares
10 N 1ft,a 9
in the dark hour of the church's disrup
ton, played kite for recreation-so
was told by his own daughter-and tn,
busy Christ said to the busy apostles
Come ye apart awhile into the deser
and rest yourselves" And | have oh
served that they who do not know how
to rest do not know how to work. Blu
| have to declare this truth to-day-tha
some of our fashionable watering place
are the temporal and eternal destruc
8 tion of "a multitude that no man caI
number" and amid the congratuation
of this season and the prospects of tn
| departure of many of you for the coun
try | must utter warning, plain, ear
nest and unmistakable.
, The first emptation that is apt L
5 hover in this direction is to leave you
piety at home. You will send the dot
and cat and canary bird to be well care,
for somewhere else, but the temptation
' will be to leave your religion in tn
room with the blinds down and tn
doors bolted, and then you will com
: back in the autumn 20 find that it i
= starved and suffocated, lying stretches
on the rug, stark dead. There is no sur
plus OF piety at the watering places.
never knew anyone to grow very rapid
ly in grace at the Catsldll Mountai
, house or Sharon Springs or the Falls @
Montmorency. 1t is generally the cas-
that the Sabbath is more of carousa
than any other day, and there are Sur
; day walks, and Sunday rides, and Sun
day excursions. Elders and deacon
and ministers of religion who are Ell
tirely consistent at home, sometime
when tba Sabbath daUDs ou fhpm n