Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Dreams Variously Classified. Some are God-Sent, as the Dreams of Nebuchadnezzar; Others Simply Products of Nature.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter XLVII.—Dreams
Variously Classified. Some are God-Sent, as the Dreams of
Nebuchadnezzar; Others Simply Products of Nature.
We declare, then, that dreams are inflicted on us
mainly by demons, although they sometimes turn out true and favourable
to us. When, however, with the deliberate aim after evil, of which we
have just spoken, they assume a flattering and captivating style, they
show themselves proportionately vain, and deceitful, and obscure, and
wanton, and impure. And no wonder that the images partake of the
character of the realities. But from God—who has promised,
indeed, “to pour out the grace of the Holy Spirit upon all flesh,
and has ordained that His servants and His handmaids should see visions
as well as utter prophecies”1773
—must all
those visions be regarded as emanating, which may be compared to the
actual grace of God, as being honest, holy, prophetic, inspired,
instructive, inviting to virtue, the bountiful nature of which
causes them to overflow even to the profane, since God, with grand
impartiality, “sends His showers and sunshine on the just and on
the unjust.”1774
It was, indeed by
an inspiration from God that Nebuchadnezzar dreamt his dreams;1775
and almost the greater part of mankind get
their knowledge of God from dreams. Thus it is that, as the mercy of
God super-abounds to the heathen, so the temptation of the evil one
encounters the saints, from whom he never withdraws his malignant
efforts to steal over them as best he may in their very sleep, if
unable to assault them when they are awake. The third class of dreams
will consist of those which the soul itself apparently creates for
itself from an intense application to special circumstances. Now,
inasmuch as the soul cannot dream of its own accord (for even
Epicharmus is of this opinion), how can it become to itself the cause
of any vision? Then must this class of dreams be abandoned to the
action of nature, reserving for the soul, even when in the ecstatic
condition, the power of enduring whatever incidents befall it? Those,
moreover, which evidently proceed neither from God, nor from diabolical
inspiration, nor from the soul, being beyond the reach as well of
ordinary expectation, usual interpretation, or the possibility of being
intelligibly related, will have to be ascribed in a separate category
to what is purely and simply the ecstatic state and its peculiar
conditions.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
