Connecticut western news., 1901-12-05

Ing rom your cOucn, you ought 10 kneel down and say: 70 God, am I i'm mortal? Whence? Whither? Two na- lures. My soul caged 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 1t fly when my body sleeps the long sleep of the graveT Oh, this power to dream, how startling, how overwhelming! 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 car. buncles 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 bust ness, and he suffered from cratic slumber, and he writes in Ecclesiastes, "A dream cometh through the multi. tude of business" Dr. Gregory, in ex. perimenting with dreams, found that a bottle of hot water put to his feet while In slumber made him think he was going up the hot sides of Mount Etna. Another morbid physician, ex perimenting with dreams, his feet un covered through sleep, thought he was riding in an Alpine diligence. But a great many dreams are merely mar cotic disturbance. Anything that you see while 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 following words: T was wor- shiped, I was sacrificed, I fled from the wrath of Brahma, through all the forests of Asia. Vishnu hated me. Sceva laid in wait for me. came suddenly upon Isis and Osiris. l had done deed, they said, that made the crocodiles tremble. I was buried for a thousand years in stone collins, with mummies and sphinxes in narrow chambers at the heart of eternal pyra- mids. I was kissed with the can founded with unutterable slimy things among wreathy and Nilotic mud"
 Dyspeptic Christianity.
 Do not mistake narcotic disturbance for divine revelation. But I have to tell you that the majority of the dreams are merely the penalty of outraged di- gestive organs, and you have no right to mistake the nightmare for heavenly revelation. Late suppers are war ,4xv fOr hn1 tcrh1 Ivy spiced salads at II o'clock at night, in- stead'of opening the door heavenward, open the door internal and diabolical. You outrage natural law, and you in- suit the God who made those laws. It takes from three to five hours to di- gest food, and you have no right to keep your digestive organs in struggle when the rest of your body is in som- nolence. The general rule Is eat noth- sleep on your right side, keep the win dow open five inches for ventilation, and other worlds will not disturb you much. By physical maltreatment you take the ladder that Jacob saw In his dream, and you lower 1t to the neither world, allowing the ascent of the de moniacal. Dreams are midnight dys- pepsia. An unregulated desire for something to eat ruined the race in paradise, and an unregulated desire for something to eat keeps it ruined. The world during coco years has tried in vain to digest that first apple. The world will not be evangelized until we get rid of a dyspeptic Christianity. Healthy people do not want the cadav- erous and sleepy thing that some peo- pie call religion. They want 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 cannot 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 Leipsic, Dresden and Borodino came near being destroy ed through the disturbed gastric juices of It's commander. That Is the way you have lost some of your battles.
 Mission of Dreams.
 Another remark I make Is that our dreams are apt to be merely the echo of our daytime thoughts. I will give you a recipe for pleasant dreams. Fill your days with elevated thought and unselfish action and your dreams will be set to music. If all day you are gouging and grasping and avaricious. in your dreams you will see gold that you cannot clutch and bargains in which you were out-Shylocked. If 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. If you are all day long in a hurry, at night you will dream of rail trains that you want to catch while you cannot move one inch toward the depot. If you are always oversuspicious and expectant of as- sault, you will have at night hallu- cinations of assassins with daggers drawn. No one wonders that Richard IT., the iniquitous, the night before the battle of Bosworth 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 philosophic echo. The poets dream Is rhythmic echo. Coleridge composed his "Kubla Khan" asleep in a narcotic dream and, walk ing up, wrote down 300 lines of 1t. Tartinia, 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 man spend his life in trying to make others happy and Is heavenly minded, around his pillow he will see cripples who have got over their crutch, and processions of celestial imperials, and hear the grand march roll down from drums of heav- en over jasper parapets. You are very apt to hear In dreams what you hear when you are wide awake.
 Now, having shown you that, having