Now, would you know for yourself, like the communicant who came to me in my sleep, how you are ever to get past all those arbours, and settles, and seats, and couches, with all their sweet sorceries and intoxicating enchantments—­would you in earnest know that?  Then study well the case of one Standfast.  Especially the time when she who enchants this whole ground hereabouts set so upon that pilgrim.  In one word, it was this:  he remembered his Lord; and, like his Lord, he fell on his face; and as his Lord would have it, His servant’s lips as they touched the ground touched also the healing plant harmony and he was saved.

         “A small unsightly root,
   But of divine effect. 
   Unknown, and like esteem’d, and the dull swain
   Treads on it daily with his clouted shoon;
   And yet more med’cinal is it than that moly
   That Hermes once to wise Ulysses gave;
   He call’d it haemony, and gave it me,
   And bade me keep it as of sovran use
   ’Gainst all enchantments, mildew, blast, or damp,
   Or ghastly furies’ apparition. 
   And now I find it true; for by this means
   I knew the foul enchantress, though disguised,
   Enter’d the very lime-twigs of her spells,
   And yet came off.  If you have this about you
   (As I will give you when you go) you may
   Boldly assault the necromancer’s hall: 
   Where if she be, with dauntless hardihood,
   And brandished blade, rush on her, break her glass,
   And shed her luscious liquor on the ground,
   And seize her wand.”

Prayer, my sin-beset brethren, standfast prayer, is the otherwise unidentified haemony whose best habitat was the Garden of Gethsemane; and with that holy root in your heart and in your mouth, there is “no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divination against Israel.”

THE LAND OF BEULAH

   “Thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy land Beulah.”—­Isaiah.

The first thing that John Bunyan tells us about the land of Beulah is this—­that the shortest and the best way to the Celestial City lies directly through that land.  The land of Beulah has its own indigenous inhabitants indeed.  Old men dwell in the streets of Beulah, and every man with his staff in his hand for very age.  The streets of the city also are full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof.  The land of Beulah has its frequent visitors also, and its welcome guests from the regions above.  Some of the shining ones come down from time to time and make a short sojourn in Beulah.  The angels in heaven have such a desire to see the lands from which God’s saints come up that at certain seasons all the suburbs of the Celestial City are full of those shining servants of God and of the Lamb.