But however intimately either the phenomena of our dreams, or even our waking thoughts, may be connected with the brain, the supposition that an epic poem, such as the Paradise Lost, was a mere glandular production, a secretion from Milton's brain, has been fairly characterized by Mr. Abernethy as simply absurd. It is not the material mechanism that feels, hears, sees, and thinks, but its spiritual partner, which resembles its Maker in the integrity of its essence. Neither is this idea of the soul's integrity impugned by the fact that God has made the brain his instrument of communication with his creature man; for it neither requires great metaphysical acuteness to perceive, nor great condescension on the part of the materialist to admit, that God has a right to make His will known to man in whatever way He may think proper. Accordingly, we find that man, as a compound being, at present in a state of probation, is so constituted, as to be able by means of the material organs of the brain, and the endowments of his soul, to commune, not only with the world around him, but with the world of spirits, and the essential Deity itself.

To be able, through the atoning blood of Christ, and the sanctifying influence of the Holy Spirit, to commune in purity of heart, and loose to the things of this life, with our heavenly Father, must surely constitute the greatest refinement and exaltation of human existence. The Spinozist, according to Coleridge's concentrated definition of Spinozism, maintains that, "Each thing has a life of its own, and we are all one life." The Pantheist makes the Universe the Supreme God, and so on throughout the diversified phases of Atheism. It is the glorious

privilege of Christians only to know that in the one essential, incomprehensible Godhead, there are three persons, each distinct from the others, yet together one God. This is the great revealed truth to which Christians are pledged to stand fast; it is this which distinguishes their creed from the vain imaginations of all the world besides. And because spiritual things and persons can only be spiritually discerned, our blessed Lord, after His resurrection from the dead, resumed a robe of flesh in order to make Himself known to His Apostles and other chosen witnesses. It was only for the accomplishment of especial objects that he made Himself thus miraculously visible; flesh and blood were no longer appropriate to Him; His human body was become a spiritual body, and, as such, invisible to those who were still in the flesh. In like manner they who left their graves at the period of our Saviour's resurrection, and appeared unto many, were doubtless made visible by the miraculous re-investiture of their bodies.

We can think of our friends, however distant, but we can realize no closer approach to personal intercourse with them than such as constitutes the most interesting feature of our dreams.

In our waking state we speak of the past, the present, and the future, but we are really conversant with the present only; whereas, in our dreams, we are as much at home with the dead as with the living; and we catch at times glimpses of the future, which appear to have no connexion with the storehouse of the brain. Neither can I, in opposition to facts which have come under my own experience, attribute the fulfilment of

every dream, predictive of a coming event, to the misapplied category of fortuitous occurrences, commonly called the chapter of accidents.

However sportive and incoherent dreams ordinarily may be, there are times when the bodily senses are drowned in sleep, and the soul seems capable of holding communion with the spiritual world. It must have been in some such abstraction of the soul from its corporeal associate that the dreams, and visions, and revelations, which we read of in the Scriptures, were imparted to chosen individuals. Neither can there be anything more in accordance with the phenomena of our compound nature than the evidence which dreams afford of the different tendencies of our animal and mental parts. In the words of St. Paul, "The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary the one to the other.” *

In our waking moments reason admonishes us plainly enough that such is indeed the case; and if, in sleep, our thoughts are often jumbled together in strange confusion, the hints which dreams occasionally afford of a harbour of refuge for the soul beyond the turmoils of the present life, are as clear as they are gratifying. We have communications made to us which completely subvert the axiom of the materialists-"Nihil esse in intellectu quod non fuit prius in sensu." That the spirit of man, in short, is so constituted as to admit of his holding communion with the Spirit of God, is a doctrine alike supported by the authority of inspired penmen, by

• Gal. v. 17.

the arguments of the soundest metaphysicians, and by what we can collect from our own unsophisticated ratiocinations and reflections.

It may be safely enunciated that the more profoundly the external senses and the cerebral organs are steeped in sleep, the clearer is the intuition of the spirit. Our ordinary dreams depend so much upon constitutional temperament, upon our repletions, our vigils, our occupations, and on such a vast variety of other accidental conditions, that they scarcely admit of being invested with the garb of philosophy, either from the studio of the phrenologist, or the more subtle laboratory of the metaphysician.

Dr. Darwin long ago, and, more recently, Lord Brougham, have shown how short a time in reality suffices to give rise to a very long and diversified dream; and to this every one who has been in the habit of dreaming will, upon reflection, bear testimony. For this reason, and because it likewise happens that the more our sleep is broken, the more we are apt to dream, it has been, too hastily, inferred, that we only dream at the instant of transition from sleeping to waking. There is, moreover, a wide difference between the phenomena of dreams, whatever may be their proximate cause, and those which characterise the moment that precedes suspended animation from drowning. In this latter case there seems to be no connexion whatever between the thoughts which crowd the mind, and any such exciting cause as usually gives form and colouring to a dream.

The following may be adduced as an example of the most common form of dreams :

Among Lady Hester Stanhope's Memoirs, as related by herself in conversation with her physician, her Ladyship says, in illustration of her uncle, Mr. Pitt's natural urbanity, "I recollect returning late from a ball, when he was gone to bed fatigued; there were others besides myself, and we made a good deal of noise. I said to him next morning, 'I am afraid we disturbed you last night.' 'Not at all,' he replied; I was dreaming of the "Mask of Comus," Hester, and, when I heard you all so gay, it seemed a pleasant reality.""*

Now there can, I suppose, be no doubt that the noise made by the party returning from the ball, both occasioned and characterised Mr. Pitt's dream. He was indebted to the noise and the sensorial excitement it occasioned, for his enjoyment of the "Mask of Comus."

The following instances are taken from "The Life of Bishop Jebb:"

Judge Jebb was bathing with his brother, the late Bishop Jebb, who was then in his eighteenth year and younger than himself, when both were nearly drowned, the one attempting to save the other, and neither being able to swim. "I was nearly exhausted," says the Judge, "my sight was gone; and my hearing and understanding nearly gone. I suppose I had fully experienced what it is to be drowned. The mental suffering was the keenest; a crowd of thoughts; the affliction of my family, the loss of life, the separation from all I knew, the nearness of the shore, the impossibility of reaching it, vexation at dying in such a way, the taking my

* Memoirs, vol. i. p. 158, ed. 1846.