fs also. It more than compensated them
for all their labours and all their afflictions. And it was a full
indemnification to them for all that they had forsaken and lost both in
beginning to be pilgrims and in enduring to the end. The children of
Israel had their first solace in their pilgrimage at Elim, where there
were twelve wells of water and threescore and ten palm-trees; and they
encamped there by the waters. And then they had their last and crowning
solace when the spies came back from Eshcol with a cluster of grapes that
they bare between two upon a staff, with pomegranates and figs. And
Moses kept solacing his charge all the way through the weary wilderness
with such strong consolations as these: "For the Lord thy God bringeth
thee into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths
that spring out of valleys and hills; a land of wheat, and barley, and
vines, and fig-trees; a land of oil-olive and honey; a land wherein thou
shalt eat bread without scarceness, thou shalt not lack anything in it; a
land whose stones are iron, and out of whose hills thou mayest dig
brass." Our Lord spake solace to His doubting and fainting disciples
also in many such words as these: "Verily, I say unto you, there is no
man that hath left house, or parents, or brethren, or wife, or children
for the kingdom of God's sake, who shall not receive manifold more in
this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting." The Mount
of Transfiguration also was His own Beulah-solace; and the Last Supper
and the prayer with which it wound up were given to our Lord and to His
disciples as a very Eshcol-cluster from the Paradise above. Now, I saw
in my dream that they solaced themselves in the land of Beulah for a
season. Yea, here they heard continually the singing of birds. (The
Latin poets called the birds _solatia ruris_, because they refreshed and
cheered the rustic labourers with their sweet singing.) And every day
the flowers appeared in the earth, and the voice of the turtle was heard
in the land. In this country the sun shineth night and day, for there is
no night there.

3. "In this country the sun shineth night and day." How much Standfast
must have enjoyed that land of light you may guess when you recollect
that he came from Darkland, which lies in the hemisphere right opposite
to the land of Beulah. In Darkland the sun never shines to be called
sunshine at all. All the days of his youth, Stand