But, though we happily no longer believe in the terror by night which
comes from witches, demons, or ghosts, there is another kind of
terror by night in which we must believe, for it comes to us from
God, and should be listened to as the voice of God: even that terror
about our own sinfulness, folly, weakness which comes to us in dreams
or in sleepless nights. Some will say, 'These painful dreams, these
painful waking thoughts, are merely bodily, and can be explained by
bodily causes, known to physicians.' Whether they can or not,
matters very little to you and me. Things may be bodily, and yet
teach us spiritual lessons. A book--the very Bible itself--is a
bodily thing: bodily leaves of paper, printed with bodily ink; and
yet out of it we may learn lessons for our souls of the most awful
and eternal importance. And so with these night fancies and night
thoughts. We may learn from them. We are forced often to learn from
them, whether we will or not. They are often God's message to us,
calling us to repentance and amendment of life. They are often God's
book of judgment, wherein our sins are written, which God is setting
before us, and showing us the things which we have done.
Who that has come to middle age does not know how dreams sometimes
remind him painfully of what he once was, of what he would be still,
without God's grace? How in his dreams he finds himself tempted by
the old sins; giving way to the old meannesses, weaknesses, follies?
How dreams remind him, awfully enough, that though his circumstances
have changed,--his opinions, his whole manner of life, have changed--
yet he is still the same person that he was ten, twenty, thirty,
forty years ago, and will be for ever? Nothing bears witness to the
abiding, enduring, immortal oneness of the soul like dreams when they
prove to a man, in a way which cannot be mistaken--that is, by making
him do the deed over again in fancy--that he is the same person who
told that lie, felt that hatred, many a year ago; and who would do
the same again, if God's grace left him to that weak and sinful
nature, which is his master in sleep, and runs riot in his dreams.
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