The Religious Element in Summer Diversions.
AMERICAN society is evidently going through important transformations in its summer experience, and not only pleasure and business, but morality and religion are to feel the influence. It is to be decided whether the prevailing disposition of favored families is to be toward quiet rural life, or toward gay watering-places—toward a permanent summer home, or toward a round of exciting travel and voyaging. Thus far it seems to us that the most sensible people desire to vary city agitation by country repose, and that every year the number increases of those who are in search of modest, healthful, and attractive, rural cottages. The connection of religion with the summer exodus is assuming remarkable proportions, and in conspicuous cases large communities gather during the hot months around a religious center, as at Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., and at our own Sea Cliff. This latter place is, in its way, unique, and promises to show the union of a handsome village with an annual camp-meeting. The settlement is upon a commanding bluff near Glen Cove, at the entrance of Hempstead Bay, with pleasant drives in various directions, and but two miles from the summer homes of William C. Bryant and Parke Godwin. We understand that twenty-five new cottages have been built there since last season—some of them at a cost of $25,000 each. There is a large tabernacle, with a lofty dome, for public worship, and the summer arrangements promise, among other attractions, a great musical jubilee from August 17 to 31, with Dr. Tourjee and Carl Zerrahn as leaders. Monday opened a series of biblical entertainments of a peculiar kind, at which music is to be mingled with the exposition of Bible words, and instruction and pleasure are to go hand in hand. How elements so difficult to harmonize as prayer meetings and summer amusements are to be combined we do not undertake to say, but the disciples of Wesley have a mighty way of their own of settling social problems, and they will settle this happily, we doubt not. —N. Y. Evening Post, of July 7.