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 one buzz of salutation, congratulation, and benediction.  Here they heard voices from out of the city, loud voices, saying, Say ye to the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy salvation cometh; behold, his reward is with him.  Here all the inhabitants of the country called them the holy people, the redeemed of the Lord, sought out, a city not forsaken.

6.  Now, as they walked in this land they had more rejoicing than in parts more remote from the kingdom to which they were bound.  And still drawing nigh to that city they had yet a more perfect view thereof.  It was builded of pearls and precious stones, also the street thereof was paved with gold, so that by reason of the natural glory of the city and the reflection of the sunbeams upon it, Christian with desire fell sick.  Hopeful also had a fit or two of the same disease.  Wherefore here they lay by it awhile, crying out because of their pangs, If you see my beloved, tell him that I am sick of love.  There are in all good cases of recovery three successive stages of soul-sickness.  True, soul-sickness always runs its own course, and it always runs its own course in its own order.  This special sickness first shows itself when the soul becomes sick with sin.  We have that sickness set forth in many a psalm, notably in the thirty-eighth psalm; and in a multitude of other scriptures, both old and new, this evil disease is dealt with if we had only the eyes and the heart to read such scriptures.  The second stage of this sickness is when a sinner is not so much sick with the sin that dwelleth in him as sick of himself.  Sinfulness in its second stage becomes so incorporate with the sinner’s whole life—­sin so becomes the sinner’s very nature, and, indeed, himself,—­that all his former loathing of sin passes over henceforth into loathing of himself.  This is the most desperate stage in any man’s sickness; but, bad as it is, incurable as it is, it must be passed into before the third stage of the healing process can either be experienced or understood.  In the case in hand, by the time the pilgrims had come to Beulah they had all had their full share of sin and of themselves till they here entered on an altogether new experience.  “Christian with desire fell sick,” we read, “and Hopeful also had a fit or two of the same disease.  Wherefore here they lay by it a while, crying out because of their pangs, If you see my beloved, tell him that I am sick of love.”  David, Paul, Bernard, Bunyan himself, Rutherford, Brainerd, M’Cheyne, and many others crowd in upon the mind.  I shall but instance John Flavel and Mrs. Jonathan Edwards, and so close.  John Flavel being once on a journey set himself to improve the time by meditation, when his mind grew intent, till at length he had such