have been monitory, consolatory, instructive, or terrifying; and even some also in the New Testament. Some indeed were of a prohetic nature, as that of Abraham, Gen. xv. 12. We do not mean to treat of these; but of our common dreams. The subject ought to be spoken of with caution, for the wise man says, "In the multitude of dreams both vanities and words are multiplied; but fear thou God." Eccles. v. 7. From this comparison of Scriptures, we may infer there is both an use, and an abuse of dreams. Some persons are so superstitious as to make their dreams a constant rule of action. Others totally disregard all dreams, however impressive, and laugh at those who pay the smallest respect to them. Betwixt these extremes there is a medium, which wisdom will adopt and act accordingly. The great Mr. Locke, and after him many others, have supposed that some people never dream. It is a fact much more demonstrable that most people do frequently dream in their sleep. How is it possible for any to remember, and be certain that they did not dream? It is mere likely that they forgot what they have dreamt of. I doubt if there be a man living but what does sometimes dream in his sleep; and it will be granted by my readers that a great part of mankind dream all their life long, both sleeping and waking. Whether there be any proof of the materiality or immateriality of the soul arising from the subject of dreams, has been much disputed, and many considerable writers have taken different sides of the question. Many dreams may be traced to a certain source: the concerns of the day often engage the mind in our sleeping hours: and of this the wise man takes notice, “ a dream cometh through the multitude of business," says he. When the mind and body are both faigued, and we lay down to rest, our sleep is often filled with the images of things with which we have been conversant in the day; but it is not often that they arise in any regular succession, or continue long in any connected order. They are generally wild, irregular, unconnected, and fantastical. It would be folly itself to pay any serious regard to this class of dreams.^ However vague dreams of business are in general, yet when they are regular, clear, and relate to business not yet executed, they are not always to be totally slighted: I have known very sensible persons who have declared that they have received a convincing idea how to proceed in some difficult piece of mechanism in a dream, or how to accomplish some weighty transaction in life. Persons with weak nerves, and especially such as have had their bodily frame severely shattered by acute disorders, are very subject to dream. In such cases dreams are of a mixed and extravagant nature, things past, present, and to come are oddly jumbled together. Sometimes all the terrible calamities of life, and all the horrible and fearful descriptions of hell, which the piety or folly of men have invented, are united in strange and awful confusion to perplex and terrify the feeble soul. "If they but close their eyes to sleep, tis all confusion! An endless medley, rush upon the stage And dance and riot above controul." Something of this kind holy Job complains of. "When I say My bed shall comfort me, my couch shall ease my complaint, thou scarest me with dreams, and terrifiest me through visions." The unhappy persons 'who are in this case, not unfrequently judge wrong of their own condition, and think that to be their sin, which is only their affliction; and also are often objects of derison and contempt to such as are of firmer nerves and stronger health. Thus he that is ready to slip with his feet is as a lamp despised by him that is at ease." Some persons are naturally of a gay and airy temper; they know little of any pressure of mind, unless, indeed, some heavy atfiction, or calamity of long continuance be upon them, they know not what it is to sigh. Their dreams are frequently similar to their general temper. They skim along the surface of the earth with velocity'; they mount a fiery steed, and outstrip the wind; or they take their flight through the middle air unembarrassed with the weight of heavy limbs, and see men, and beasts, and houses, towers, and steeples beneath them. Others, perhaps, of a more phlegmatic disposition, descend, in dream, beneath the flood, and walk at the bottom of the great deep. They traverse the hills and dales of the ocean, and explore the unknown caverns of the watery world. They see, and perhaps in fancy acquire, the vast treasures that have long been accumulating there; or they contemplate the wreck of rich merchant ships laden with the productions of the east, which the raging storm has dashed against the rocks, or the sudden and tremendous squall has buried beneath the waves. They behold the remains of proud navies, once the terror of the distant shore; but now dismasted, torn with the boisterous winds, or pierced with the deathful ball from the destructive and loud mouthed cannon, they lie in grand but awful confusion beneath the waters. The dreamer views the sad spectacle, made more affecting by the thousand human skeletons or half eaten carcasses of the thoughtless but hardy warriors who dealt death to each other in their fury. Filled with astonishment and grief, the visionary mortal feels the blood chill in his veins, when some unformed monster, or dragon of the deep, opens his horrid mouth to destroy him: he immerges from beneath the briny surface, and wakes with satisfaction and joy. The voluptuous man also has his dreams. When awake, he is, as the the scripture expresses, a " son of Belial," a lawless one. No restraint, human or divine, çan bind him to the practice of virtue. He says to his companions Come, "let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us." We will have the harp and the viol, the tabret and thepipe; wine and women shall crown our feasts: we will wear the wreath of rosebuds and jessamin, aud our soul shall know no sorrow. He continues at the banquet till wine inflames him, he spends his nights in revelry. When the morning approaches he sinks upon the bed of sloth, and his sensual fancy again repeats the nameless excesses of his waking hours; but he is not totally at peace. Some unhappy female whose virtue he has ruiped, and whom his lust and treachery have brought to an untimely end, presents her faded form before him, and upbraids his guilty soul: or some companion of his vices, some abettor and partner of his crimes, cut off in the prime of life, rises in the ghastly form of death, and tells him there is a God and a judgment to come. He wakes appalled with fear, his hair bristling with horror: and it is well if he suffer the visionary reproof to correct his vicious life, and turn not again to his follies. Thus God speaks, in a dream, in a vision of the night; though, often, man regardeth it not. The covetous person, whose sin is idolatry, and whose life is spent in anxious care, he feels at times the pleasure and the pain of dreams. He lays his plans with caution, and executes them with alacrity and dispatch. He heaps up riches; but forgets God who gives him power to get them. He sacrificeth to his own net, and burneth incense to his own drag, and saith, The power of my own hand hath gotten me this. He enlargeth his desire as hell, and is as death that cannot be satisfied. He encreaseth that which is not his own, and ladeth himself with thick clay. Yet he hath not the power to use his wealth: it rusteth in his coffers, or accumulates by usury: it is as useless to mankind as though it was hidden in an hole in the midst of his tent, as Achan hid his ill-gotten treasures of old. The widow and the fatherless cry in vain for help, and modest merit dies in his presence unpitied; and every poor man is in his view a rascal; while he soalces his foolish heart with the thought of his wealth. With this he retires to his couch, and closes his eyes with self-complacence. He dreams, and all his riches rise to view, and the bent of his soul discovers itself by a fancied augmentation of his pelf. While he is contemplating the pleasing theme, the scene changes; he dreams of the devastations of fire, the destruction of floods, the violence of thieves, or the prodigality of an heir; his anxious soul groans with pain, and he wakes in an agony of care. The awakened sinner, whose conscience is alarmed by the word of truth, and now as the part of a faithful monitor, dreams of past transgression, and his perturbed mind is filled with alarming images of death, judgment, and hell. Sins long forgotten are brought to remembrance, and, with all their aggravations, are caused to pass in order before him he sees and acknowledges them for his own: stricken with their guilt, his spirit sinks within him; he imagines himself upon the brink of the great gulph, and just ready to take his part with the damned. He cries mightily for mercy; the hand of love and power is stretched out, and he is plucked as a brand from the burning: he wakes with mixed but indescribable emotion of joy and fear. He that has tasted that the Lord is gracious, and whose heart is reconciled by the blood of sprinkling, lives under a sense of the Divine favour. He has joy by day, and peace by night; or, if he dreams, he has an anticipation of future blessedness. He lifts up his eyes, and has a view of the coming of his master and his friend. The heavens unfold, and he beholds him whom his soul loveth, crowned with majesty and honour, attended with the innumerable company of angels, and with the ten thousands of his saints. The trumpet sounds, the dead are raised, the nations are gathered together; the hearts of thousands fail them, weeping and wailing are heard on every side, and conscious guilt covers the faces of sinners; but the saint is invigorated with holy strength, for he has walked with God. He hears the awful judge bid him welcome, his soul is ravished wih the sound, and he wakes with joy unutterable, and cries, "Even so, Lord Jesus, come quickly." In general, the imaginary transactions of the dreamer bear some relation to his particular character in the world, his habits of action, and the circumstances of his life. The veteran soldier dreams of war and blood; the philosopher renews his researches in sleep, often with the same pain and fatigue as when awake; and the merchant, at times, returns to balance his books, and compute the profits of an adventure, when slumbering on his pillow. Having briefly described different characters, we will now enquire into the cause of dreaming. This part of the subject has engaged the attention of the philosophers, both of ancient and modern days: yet perhaps, it will be found that we must rest without certainty upon this question. Indeed this is not the only question in which probability only can be attained. Human knowledge is, as yet, greatly confined; but this is no reason why we should not continue to enquire; rather, it ought to quicken our attention. The most inquisitive mind, and the strongest understanding, must, perhaps, in every state, be surrounded with appearances and facts, which its utmost efforts will never demonstrably account for. ་ The action of the body upon the soul, has been thought by some to be the cause of dreams. But what power can there be in the body to perform this action? We know that the body is composed of matters and, however finely it may be modified, in whatever way it be compounded or decompounded, it is matter still. It is universally allowed, that matter, in all its possible forms, is passive, inactive, and dead. It is entirely destitute of all power of motion. Who, therefore, that considers this, can say, that the action of the body upon the soul is adequate to the production of dreams? We not only have a great variety of sensible objects represented in our dreams, but also, sometimes, whole scenes of discourse and action. We sometimes see persons and things which we never thought of before, or such, perhaps, as never existed; we have the most lively pictures painted upon the imagination; nor do we always dream of what is past; we often dream of what is future, and now and then with such clearness and impression that we do not forget the ideas, though they are not realized till many years afterwards. If dreams were owing to the mechanism of the body, it should seem reasonable to expect they would be like other mechanical effects, constant and regular. But the inconstancy and irregularity observable in dreams, should, of itself, in my opinion, be sufficient to refute the idea that they can be accounted for mechanically, according to the laws of matter and motion, If they were occasioned by the traces of ideas left in the sensory, surely they would present us with nothing but what we had seen or thought of before. But this, as before observed, is not the case. Mr. Locke, has, indeed, somewhere in his Essay on the Human Understanding, granted the possibility of matter being so finely modified as to think: but this he only mentions as capable of being performed by the power of God. Now, not to observe that this idea is unphilosophical, as being utterly contrary to the known properties of matter, we only observe, that the possible actions of divine power are out of the question. We must not confound the properties of matter and spirit together, in order to account for the action of one upon the other. “In dreaming we do not consider ourselves as witnessing or bearing a part in a fictitious scene: we seem not to be in a similar situation with the actors in a dramatic performance, or the spectators before whom they exhibit, but engaged in the business of real life. All the varieties of thought that pass through our minds when awake, may also occur in dreams; all the images which imagination presents in the former state, she is able also to call up in the latter; all the same emotions may be excited, and we are often actuated by equal violence of passion; none of the transactions in which we are capable of engaging while awake are impossible in dreams: in short, our range of action and observation is equally wide in the one state as in the other; while dreaming we are not sensible of any distinction, between our dreams and the events and transactions in which we are actually concerned in our intercourse with the world." Let any man think of this, and then ask himself if any possible action of the body upon the soul be capable of producing these things. We dismiss this idea, therefore, as totally inadequate to the effect. TO BE CONTINUED. |