St. Tammany farmer. [volume] (Covington, La.) 1874-current, 1901-12-28

independent of the body. The eye
are closed, the senses are dull. tn,
entire body goes into letharg,
which in all languages is used as
type OF death, and then the sou
spreads its wing and never sleeps. L
leaps the Atlantic ocean and mingle.
in scenes 5000 miles away. It travels
great reaches of time, flashes back 81
years, and the octogenarian is a DO,
again in his fathers house. If the
soul, before it has entirely broken its
chain OF flesh, can do all this, how fa1
can it leap, what circles can it cut
when it is fully liberated? Every
dream, whether agreeable or harass
ing, whether sunshiny or tempestu
ous' means SO much that, rising from
your couch, you ought to kneel down
and say: 20 God, 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,
now startling, how overwhelming!
Immortal, immortal!
Remark the Third.-The vast ma
Jority of dreams are merely the re-
suit of disturbed physical conditions
and are not supernatural message.
Job had carbuncles, and he was
scared in the night. He says: "Thou
scarest me with dreams and terri
| hest me with Visions" Solomon had
an overweight brain, overweight
with public business, and he suffered
from cratic 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 slum-
Der made him think he was going
up the hot sides of Mount Etna. An
other morbid physician, experiment.
ing with dreams, his feet uncovered
through sleep, thought he was rid
ing in an Alpine diligence. But a
great many dreams are merely mar
cote disturbances. Anything that
you see while under the influence of
choral or brandy or hasheesh or
laudanum is not q revelation from
God.
The learned DR.. Quincy did not
ascribe to Divine communication
what he saw in sleep, opium sat-
urated, dreams which he afterward
described in the following words: 81
was worshiped; 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. 1 came suddenly upon Isis
and Osiris. I had done a deed, they
said, that made the crocodiles trem-
BILE. I was buried for a thousand
years in stone collins, with num-
mics and sphinxes in narrow cham
bers at the heart of eternal pyra-
mids. I was kissed with the cam
cerous kiss of crocodiles and lay con-
founded with unutterable Shiny
things among wreathy and Nilotic
mud"
Do not mistake narcotic disturb
ance for Divine revelation. But I
have to tell you that the majority 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 warranty deed
for bad dreams. Highly spiced sal
ads at II o'clock at night, instead
of opening the door heavenward,
open the door internal and diabol-
ical. You outrage natural law, and
you insult the God who made those
laws. It takes from three to five
hours to digest food, and you have
no right to keep your digestive Or
gans 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 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 it to the
neither world, allowing the ascent of
the demoniacal. Dreams are mid
night dyspepsia. An unregulated de-
sire for something to eat keeps it
ruined. The world during 5000 years
has tried in vain to digest that first
apple. The world will not be evan
gelized until we get rid of dyspep-
tic Christianity. Healthy people do
not want this cadaverous and sleepy
thing that some people call religion.
They want a religion that lives reg
ularly by day and sleeps soundly by
night. If through trouble or coming
on of old age or exhaustion of Chris
tian 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- indi-
gestibles. Napoleon's army at Leip-
sic, Dresden and Borodino came neae
being destroyed through the dis
turbed gastric juices of its command
err. That is the way you have LOST
some of your battles.
Now, having shown you that, hav-
ing Bible, we ought to be satisfied
with not getting any further com
from God, and having
shown you that all dreams have an
mission since they show
the comparative independence of the
soul from the body, and having
dreams are result of disturbed
physical conditions, and shaying
shown you that our sleeping