They may, as Mr. Dacier observes, be com pared to the stories of an avowed liar which casually may be true; we have, however, no criterion by which to judge whether they may bear any affinity to remote events, and it is reasonable to presume that they do not by any concerted appointment, since God cannot be supposed to have designed to harass us with. fruitless premonitions, and to distract our minds with fallacious ambiguities. They may still, however, be understood to be designed for great moral purposes as affording subject for reflection, in a point of view in which they will be considered in some succeeding chapter. GENERAL CHAPTER XIII. REFLECTIONS ON SLEEP AND DREAMING, WITH REFERENCE TO SOME REMARKABLE ACCOUNTS. "Next how soft sleep o'er all spreads thoughtless rest," And frees from anxious care the troubled breast." Creech's Lucret. B. 4. IN what the author has advanced in the preceding chapters, he has not presumed peremptorily to determine that dreams for great and important purposes may not have been inspired without reference to the evidence of revealed religion. He has designed, however, to intimate as his opinion, that dreams, in general, are not to be considered as having any necessary connection with futurity, and that certainly no general ground of confidence in them is established. Considering then ordinary dreams as the uninspired productions of the human mind, he proceeds to enter into a slight discussion of their general nature, adverting to such causes as may reasonably be assigned for, and calculated to explain them. In treating of such dreams, it is obvious. that he speaks of those representations only which are addressed to the mind, in sleep, in a state of suspension of the corporeal powers; and he regards these as comprehending whatever is the object of our thoughts in sleep, and not merely in the restricted definition of Macrobius, who considers a dream as " that which covers with figures, and veils in mysteries," a signification that can be understood only by interpretation. The dreams of which he speaks result from the exertion of the mental faculties, and include as well those that are of obvious and direct import, as those which are enigma tical and figurative; and, in short, every species that does not involve the idea of inspiration. On a general reflection that dreams take place when the body is inactive and dormant, it may be expedient to examine a little into the nature of sleep, which is one of the most remarkable regulations of Providence, and intimately connected with some of the great arrangements of his appointment, who has "established day and night for a perpetual ordinance;" the latter for sleep, which is well described as " Nature's soft nurse," as that which "knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care, The birth of each day's life, sore labour's bath, As indeed it is the fostering and gentle so other of human cares and infirmities, the guardian of that repose in which the preservation of the * Macbeth. human frame is cherished. If sleep be considered in abstract distinction, it is certain that notwithstanding the effects which we experience from it in recruited strength and renovated spirits, it is a state of apathy; if considered separately from dreams, it is a suspension of the mental as well as of the corporeal powers*; it is a seeming prelude of death however salubrious in supporting life, and the senses, though capable of being roused, are closed in insensibility; it appears to loosen the links of connection which subsist between the soul and body without breaking the chain. "It is death's counterfeit, We seem in it as passing to our former state Johnson's Dict. fol. ed. + Ύπνος δε θανατος τις προμελετεοις πέλει Ύπνος δε πασιν εςιν η υγεια βιος. Diversorum vapeal. Paradise Lost, B. viii. L. 290. |