The Atlanta constitution. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1885-19??, 1893-03-28


or laudanun, is not a revelation from Goa.
The learned DE Quincy did not ascrlbe TO
divine communication what we saw In
sleep, opium saturated; dreams which he
afrerward described in the following words:
II was worshiped, / was sacrificed. l
fed from the wrath of Brahmah through
all the forests of Asia. Vishnu hated
me. Sceya laid in wait for me. came
suddenly upon Isis and Osiris. l had done
deed, they said, that made the crocodlleS
trembe. | was buried for thousand
years in stone collins, with mummies and
sphinxcs in narrow chambers at the heart
OF eternal pyramids. | was kissed with
the generous kiss of crocodlcs, and lay
COMPOUNDED with unutterable Shiny things
among wrcathy and Nlotic mud" DO not
mistake narcotic disturbance for divine
revelation.
But l have to tell you that the majority
OF dreams are merely the penalty of out
ragged digestive organs, and YOU have no
right to mistake the nightmare for heaven
ly revelation. Late suppers are Il warran-
ty deed for bad dreams. Highly spiced sal
ads at IL o'clock at night. instead of open
fernal and diab0lical. You outrage nat
ural law, and YOU insult the God who made
those laws. 1t takes from three to i've
hours to digest food, and YOU have no right
to keep" your digestive organs struggling
when the rest of your body is in somnoence.
o'clock at night. retire at 10, sleep on your
right side keep the window open five inches
for ventilation and other worlds will not
disturb you much. BY physical maltreat-
nent you take the ladder that Jacob saw
in his dream and you lower it to the neither
world. allowing the ascent of the deInoni
acal. Dreams are midnight dyspepsia.
An unregulated desire for something to eat
ruined the race in paradise, and an rnreg-
uated desire for something to eat keeps
it ruined. The world during six thousand
years has tried in vain to digest that first
until we get rid of a dyspeptic Christian
ity. Healthy people do not want this ca
davcrOus and sleepy thing that some peO-
pie call religion. They want a religion that
lives regularly by day and sleeps soundly
by night. If through trouble or coming on
of old age or exhaustion of Christian SER
vice You cannot sleep well. then Won may
expect from God songs i'll the night; but
there are DO blessed communications 10
those who willingly surrender to indisesti-
bcs. Napoleon's army at Leipsic. DreS-
den and Borodino came near being destroy
ed through the disturbed gastric juices Of
its commander. That is the way YOU have
lost some of your battles.
Another remark / make is that our
dreams are apt to be merely the echo of our
day thoughts.
| will give you a recipe for pleasant
thought and unseltish action. and your
dreams will be set to music. If all dag YOU
are gouging and grasping and avarlcious,
i'll your dreams you will see gold that you
p cannot clutch, and bargains in which yes'
we're out-Shylocked. If during the day you
are irascibe and pugnacious and gunpow-
derry of disposition, you will at night have
battle with enemies i'll which they will get
the best of you. If you are
all day in a hurry. at night
you will dream of raitrains that you
want to catch while you cannot move one
inch toward the depot.
If You are always Oyer-SusplclouS and ex-
pectant of assault, you will have at night
hallucinations of assassins with daggerS
drawn. No one wonders that Richard Ill.
the inquitous. the night before the battle
of B0sworth Field dreamed that all those
whom he had murdered stared at him, and
that he was torn to pieces by demons from
the pit. The scholars dream is Il philO-
sophie echo. The poets dream is a rhyth-
mic echo. Coleridge composed his 'kubia
waking up. wrote down three hundred lines
OF it. Tartini. the violin player, composed
his most wonderful sonata while asleep in
a dream so vivid, that waking he easily
transferred it to paper.
Waking thoughts have their echo in
sleeping thoughts. If a man spends his
life in trying to make others happy, and
see cripPles who have got over their crutch.
and professions of celestial imperias, and
hear the grand march roll down from drums
of heaven of Jasper parapets. You are
very apt to hear i'll dreams what you hear
when you are wide awake.
Now, having shown you that having a
Bible we ought to be satisfied not getting
any further communication from God, and
having shown you that all dreams have IN
important mission, since they show the
comparative independence of the soul from
the body, and having shown you that the
majority of derams are results of disturb
ed physical condition, and having shown
you that our sleeping thoughts are apt to
be an echo of our waking thoughts, | come
now TO my fifth and most important remark.
and that is to say, that 1t is capable of proof
that God does sometimes III our day, and
has often since the close of the Bible dis
pensatioD. appeared to people in dreams
All dreams that make you better are
from God How do l know it? Is not
God the source of all good? 1t does not
take a very logical mind to argue that
out Tertullian and Martin Luther be
lieved in dreams The dreams of John
Huss are immortal st. Augustine, the
Christian father. gives us the fact that a
Carthaginian physican was pursuaded
of the Immortality of the soul by an ar
gJ,nent which he heard in a dream. The
night before his assassination, the wife of
Jnlius Caesar dreamed that her husband
fell dead across her lap. 1t is possible
to prove that God does appear in dreams
to warm. to convert and to save men
NV friend. a retired sea captain and Il
Christian. tells me that one night while
on the sea he dreamed that q ships crew
were in great suffering. Waking up
from his dream, he put about the ship.
tucked in different directions, surprised
everybody on the vessel-they thought he
was going crazy-sailcd on in another d.
rection hour after hour, and for many hours
until he came to the persisted crew and res
cned them, and brought them to New York
Who conducted that dream? The God Of
the sea.
In 1895. vessel went out from Spit
head for West India. and ran against the
indge of rocks called the Casltets. The
vessel went down, and the crew clam
hered up on the Baskets, to die of thirst
or starvation, as they supposed. But there
was n ship bound for Southampton that
had the captains son Oh board. This lad
twice in one night dreamed that there was
a crew Of sailors dying on the Baskets. He
told his father Of his dream. The vessel
came down by the CasketS in time to find
and to rescue those poor dying men. Who
conducted that dream? The God of the
rocks the God of the sea.
The Rev. DR. Bushnell, in his marvel
Gus book, entitled: Mature and the Su-
pernatural," gives the following fact that
he got from Captain Yount, in California,
Inv fot q