4.  “In this land also the contract between the bride and the bridegroom is renewed.”  Now, there is no other day so bitter in any man’s life as that day is on which his bridal contract is broken off.  And it is the very perfection and last extremity of bitterness when his contract is broken off because of his own past life.  Let all those, then, who would fain enter into that sweet contract think well about it beforehand.  Let them look back into all their past life.  For all their past life will be sure to find them out on the day of their espousals.  If they have their enemies—­as all espoused men have—­this is the hour and the power of their enemies.  The day on which any man’s espousals are published is a small and local 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