judgment-day to him. For all the men, and, especially,
all the women, who have ever been injured by him, or who have injured
themselves upon him; all the men and all the women who for any reason,
and for no reason, hate both him and his happiness,--their tongues and
their pens will take no sleep till they have got his contract if they
can, broken off. And even when the bridegroom is too innocent, or the
bride too true, or God too good to let the contract continue long to be
broken off, that great goodness of God and that great trust of his
contracted bride will only make the bridegroom walk henceforth more
softly and rejoice with more trembling. And that is a most excellent
mind. I know no better mind in which any man, guilty or innocent, can
enter on a married life. I sometimes tell the bridegrooms that I can
take a liberty with to keep saying to themselves all the way up to the
marriage altar the tenth verse of the 103rd psalm; as well as when they
come up afterwards to the baptismal font: "He hath not dealt with us
after our sins nor rewarded us after our iniquities." And it is surely
Beulah itself, at its very best, it is surely Beulah above itself, when a
happy bridegroom is full of that humble and happy mind, and when he is in
one and the same moment reconciled both to his bride on earth and to his
God and Father in heaven. In this land, therefore, in the land of
Beulah, the contract between the bride and the bridegroom is renewed;
yea, as the bridegroom rejoiceth over his bride, so shall thy God rejoice
over thee.

5. The salaams and salutations also that they were met with as often as
they went out to walk in the streets thereof were a constant surprise,
satisfaction, and sweetness to the fearful pilgrims. No passer-by ever
once frowned or scowled upon them because their faces were Zionward, as
they do in our cities. No one ever treated them with scorn or contempt
because they were poor or unlettered. No man's face either turned dark
at them or was turned away from them as they passed up the street. They
never, all the time they abode in Beulah, took to the lanes of the city
to escape the unkind looks of any of its citizens. Greatheart's hand was
never away from his helmet. His helmet was never well on his head. His
always bare and unhelmeted head said to all the men of Beulah, I love and
honour and trust you. You would not hurt a hair of my head. And so on,
till all the streets of Beulah were on