350 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 



wide, monotonous landscape around, he could freely 

 indulge his memories and reflections, with nothing to 

 distract his thoughts. 



When Philip joined himself to him, he was fully pre- 

 pared to receive his teaching \ his mind was made plastic 

 and his heart sensitive to spiritual impressions. Shut out 

 from the world, alone with God and the works of His 

 hands, reduced to their primitive simplicity, both the 

 eunuch and the Evangelist felt how dreadful was this 

 desert-place. It was none other than the House of 

 God and the gate of heaven. There the ladder 

 was set up by which the benighted African climbed 

 from his ignorance and darkness to the light and 

 the joy of heaven. There the mystery of the burn- 

 ing bush was revealed to him ; and as he realized 

 the great truth that He who died for his sins rose 

 again for his justification, and ever lived to make 

 intercession for him, he put off the shoes, as it were, 

 from the feet of his soul, and felt that the place in which 

 he stood was holy ground. He found there in the desert 

 not only water by which he was baptized as a Christian, 

 but in his own soul a well of water springing up into 

 everlasting life. He realized in his own experience the 

 precious word of promise contained in that very book of 

 the prophet Isaiah which he read in his chariot: 

 4t Neither let the eunuch say, Behold I am a dry tree. 

 For thus saith the Lord unto the eunuchs that keep my 

 Sabbaths, and choose the things that please me, and take 

 hold of my covenant; Even unto them will I give, in mine 

 house and within my walls, a place and a name better 



