The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1901-12-03

Tiers house. II the soul. before Il 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, Ev-
cry dream, whether agreeable or harass-
ing, whether sunshiny or tempestuous,
means SO much that. rising from your
couch, you ought to kneel down and say:
20 God, am / immortal. Whence?
WhitherI Two natures. My soul Gagged
~now-what when the door of the cage is
opened? Ii 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! Immortal. immortal!
The Cause Of Some Dreams.
Remark the Third.-The vast majority
Of dreams are merely the result OF dis
turbed physical condition and are not a
supernatura! message. Job had car
buncles, and be was scared in the night.
He says, Thou scarest me with dreams
and terrihest me with visions" Solomon
had an overwrought brain, overwrought
with public business, and he suffered
from erratic slumber. and he writes in
Ecclesiastes, "A dream cometh through
the multitude OF business" DR.. Gregory,
in experimenting 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, experimenting with
dreams, his feet uncovered through sleep,
thought be was riding in an Alpine dill
gence. But a great many dreams are
merely narcotic disturbance. Anything
that you see while under the influence of
- -
danum is not a revelation from God.
The learned De Quincy did not ascribe
to divine communication what he saw in
sleep, opium saturated, dreams which he
afterward described in the following
words: Il was worshiped; l was sacri-
feed; l fed from the wrath OF Brahma
through all the forests Of Asia. Vishnu
hated me. Sccva laid in wait for me. 1
anne suddenly upon Isis and Osiris. L
had done a deed. they said, that made the
crocodiles tremble. l was buried for a
thousand years in stone collins, with
mummies and sphinxes in narrow cham
bers at the heart of eternal pyramids. l
was kissed with the cancerous kiss of
crocodiles and lay COMPOUNDED with I'M
utterable Shiny things among wreathy
and Nilotic mud"
Do not mistake narcotic disturbance for
divine revelation. But l have to tell you
that the majority Of the dreams are mere
ly the penalty of outraged digestive or
gans, and you have no right to mistake
the nightmare for heavenly revelation.
Late suppers are q warranty deed for
bad dreams. Highly spiced salads at IL
o'clock at night, instead of opening the
door h~eavenward, open the door internal
and diabolical. You outrage 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 6 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 dis
turb you much. BY physical maltreat-
ment 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 dys-
pepsia. An unregulated desire for some
thing to eat keeps it ruined. The world
during 5000 years has tried in vain to d.
gest that first apple. The world will not
be evangelical until we get rid of a dys-
peptic Christianity. Healthy people do
not want this cadaverouS and sleepy
thing that some people call religion. They
want Il 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
Berodino came near being destroyed
through the disturbed gastric juices of its
commander. That is the way you have
lost some Of your battles.
The Echo of Day Thoughts.
Another remark l make is that our
dreams are apt to be merely the echo of
our daytime thoughts. | will give you a
recipe for pleasant dreams. Fill your
days with elevated thought and unselhsh
action, and your dreams will be set to
music. Ii all day you are gouglng and
grasping and avaricious in your dreams.
you will see gold that you cannot clutch
and bargains IN which you were out-Shy-
locked. Ii during the day you are irasci-
BILE and pugnacious and gunpowdery OF
disposition. 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 ovrrsuspicious and ex-
pectant Of assault. you will have at night
Authorizations of aSSassins with daggers
drawn. No one wonders that Richard
I'LL, the ubiquitous. the night before the
battle of Raswurth Field dreamed that
all those whom he had murdered stared
at him and that he was torn 10 pieces by
demons from th- pit. The scholars dream
is a philosophir echo The poet dream is
a rhythmic echo Coleridge composed his
"kubla Khan" asleep in a narcotic dream
and. waking up. wrote down 3OO lines OF
it. Tartinia. the violin player. composed
his most wonderful sonata while asleep in
a dream so vivid that. waking. be easily
transferred il to paper.
Waking thoughts have their echo In
sleeping thoughts. II a 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 professions of celestial impe-