The Bolivar bulletin. (Bolivar, Tenn.) 1888-1946, 1893-04-07


eyes are closed, the senses are dull, the
entire body goes into lethargy which
in all languages is used as a type of
death, and then the soul spreads its
wing and never sleeps. 1t leaps the
Atlantic ocean and mingles in scenes
three thousand miles away. It travels
great reaches of time, flashes back
eighty years, and the octogenarian is a
boy again in his fathers house. III the
soul. before it has entirely broken its
chain of flesh, can do all this, how far
can it leap, what circles can it cut when
it is fully liberated Every dream,
whether agreeable or harassing, wheth-
er sunshiny or tempestuous. means so
much that rising from your couch you
ought to kneel down and say: 20 Godl
am I immortal? Whence? Whittier?
Two natures My soul Gagged now
what when the door of the cage is
opened? If my soul can fly so far in the
few hours in which my body is asleep
in the night, how far can it fly when
my body sleeps the long sleep of the
grave?" oh, this power to dream, how
startling, how overwhelming! If pre-
pared for the after-death fight, what
an enchantment! If not prepared for
the after-death fight. what a crushing
agonyl immortal! immortal!
Remark the third: The vast majority
of dreams are merely the result of dis
turbed physical condition, and are not
supernatural message.
Job had carbuncles. and he was
scared in the night. He says: ''Thou
scarest me with dreams and terrifest
me with visions" Solomon had an
overwrought brain, overwrought with
public business, and he suffered from
erratic slumber, and he writes in Ec-
clesiastes: "a dream cometh through
the multitude of business" DIR. Greg
ory, in experimenting with dreams,
found that bottle of hot water put
to his feet while in slumber made him
sides of Mount Etna. Another NOR
bid physician, experimenting with
dreams, his feet uncovered through
sleep, thought he was riding in
an Alpine diligence. But great
many dreams are merely narcotic
disturbance. Anything that you see
w hile under the influence of chloral or
brandy, or "hasheesh," or laudanum,
is not a revelation from God. The
learned De Quincey did not ascribe to
Divine communication what he saw in
sleep, opium saturated; dreams which
he afterward described in the follow
ing words: II was worshiped, I was
sacrificed. / fed from the wrath of
Bramah, through all the forests of
Asia. Vishu hated me. Sceva laid in
wait for me. / came suddenly upon
Isis and Osiris. I had done deed,
they said, that made the crocodiles
tremble. ] was buried for one thou
sand years in stone coffins, with mum
mics and sphinxes in narrow chambers
at the heart of eternal pyramids. /
was kissed with the cancerous kiss of
unutterable Shiny things among
wreathy and Nilotic mud" Do not
mistake narcotic disturbance for Di-
vine revelation.
But / have to tell you that the ma
jority of the dreams are merely the
penalty of outraged digestive organs,
and you have no right to mistake the
nightmare for heavenly revelation.
Late suppers are a warranty deed for
bad dreams. Highly-spiced salads at
eleven o'clock at night, instead of
opening the door heavenward, open the
door internal and diabolical. You out
rage natural law, and you insult the
God who made those laws. 1t takes
from three to five hours to digest food,
and you have no right to keep your
digestive organs in struggle when the
rest of your body is in somnolence. The
general rule is, eat nothing after six
o'clock at night, retire at ten, sleep on
your right side, keep the window open
five inches for ventila ton, and other
worlds will not disturb you much. By
physical maltreatment you take the
ladder that Jacob saw in his dream
and you lower it to the
neither world, allowing the ascent
of the demoniacal. Dreams are
midnight dyspepsia. An unregu-
lated disire for something to eat ruined
the race in Paradise, and an unreg-
ulated desire for some thing to eat
keeps it ruined. The world during six
thousand years has tried in vain to di-
gest that first apple. The world will
not be evangelical until we get rid of
a dyspeptic Christianity. Healthy peo-
pie do not want this cadaverous and
sleepy thing that some people call re-
ligion. 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 service, you can not sleep
well, then you may expect from God
"songs in the night" but there are no
blessed communications to those who
willingly surrender to indigestibles.
Napoleon's army at Liepsic, Dresden
and Borodino, came near being de-
stroyed through the disturbed gastric
juices of its commander. That is the
way you have lost some of your bat
ties.
Another remark / make is that our
dreams are apt to be merely the echo
of our day thoughts.
/ will give you recipe for pleasant
dreams: Fill your days with elevated
thought and unselfsh action, and your
dreams will be set to music. If all day
you are gouging and grasping and ava
ricious, in your dreams you will see
gold that you did not clutch, and bar
gains in which you were outshylocked.
II during the day you are irascible and
pugnacious and gunpowdery of dispo-
sition, you will at night have battle
with enemies in which they will get
the best of you. II you are all day long
in hurry, at night you will dream of
rail trains that you want to catch while
you can not move one inch toward the
depot
If you are always oversuspicious and
expectant of assault. you wall have at
night hallucinations of assassins with