Whether God sends to men in these days dreams which enable them to
look forward, and to foretell things to come, I cannot say. But this
I can say, that God sends dreams to men which enable them to look
back, and recollect things past, which they had forgotten only too
easily; and that these humbling and penitential dreams are God's
warning that (as the Article says) the infection of nature doth
remain, even in those who are regenerate; that nothing but the
continual help of God's Spirit will keep us from falling back, or
falling away.
Again: those sad thoughts which weigh on the mind when lying awake
at night, when all things look black to a man; when he is more
ashamed of himself, more angry with himself, more ready to take the
darkest view of his own character and of his own prospects of life,
than he ever is by day,--do not these thoughts, too, come from God?
Is it not God who is holding the man's eyes waking? Is it not God
who is making him search out his own heart, and commune with his
spirit? I believe that so it is. If any one says, 'It is all caused
by the darkness and silence. You have nothing to distract your
attention as you have by day, and therefore the mind becomes
unwholesomely excited, and feeds upon itself,' I answer, then they
are good things, now and then, this darkness and this silence, if
they do prevent the mind from being distracted, as it is all day
long, by business and pleasure; if they leave a man's soul alone with
itself, to look itself in the face, and be thoroughly ashamed of what
it sees.
Pages:
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154