Now, the watering-places are full of temptations to men and women to tipple.  At the close of the tenpin or billiard-game they tipple.  At the close of the cotillon they tipple.  Seated on the piazza cooling themselves off they tipple.  The tinged glasses come around with bright straws, and they tipple.  First they take “light wines,” as they call them; but “light wines” are heavy enough to debase the appetite.  There is not a very long road between champagne at $5 a bottle and whiskey at five cents a glass.

Satan has three or four grades down which he takes men to destruction.  One man he takes up, and through one spree pitches him into eternal darkness.  That is a rare case.  Very seldom, indeed, can you find a man who will be such a fool as that.

When a man goes down to destruction Satan brings him to a plane.  It is almost a level.  The depression is so slight that you can hardly see it.  The man does not actually know that he is on the down grade, and it tips only a little toward darkness—­just a little.  And the first mile it is claret, and the second mile it is sherry, and the third mile it is punch, and the fourth mile it is ale, and the fifth mile it is porter, and the sixth mile it is brandy, and then it gets steeper and steeper and steeper, and the man gets frightened and says, “Oh, let me get off!” “No,” says the conductor, “this is an express train, and it does not stop until it gets to the Grand Central Depot at Smashupton.”  Ah, “look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth its color in the cup, when it moveth itself aright.  At the last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder.”  And if any young man in my congregation should get astray this summer in this direction it will not be because I have not given him fair warning.

My friends, whether you tarry at home—­which will be quite as safe and perhaps quite as comfortable—­or go into the country, arm yourself against temptation.  The grace of God is the only safe shelter, whether in town or country.  There are watering-places accessible to all of us.  You can not open a book of the Bible without finding out some such watering-place.  Fountains open for sin and uncleanliness; wells of salvation; streams from Lebanon; a flood struck out of the rock by Moses; fountains in the wilderness discovered by Hagar; water to drink and water to bathe in; the river of God, which is full of water; water of which if a man drink he shall never thirst; wells of water in the Valley of Baca; living fountains of water; a pure river of water as clear as crystal from under the throne of God.

These are watering-places accessible to all of us.  We do not have a laborious packing up before we start—­only the throwing away of our transgressions.  No expensive hotel bills to pay; it is “without money and without price.”  No long and dirty travel before we get there; it is only one step away.  California in five minutes.  I walked around and saw ten fountains, all bubbling up, and they were all different.  And in five minutes I can get through this Bible parterre and find you fifty bright, sparkling fountains bubbling up into eternal life.