The statesman, the poet, the philosopher of the Bible were unanimous in attaching prophetic significance to dreams. Has the law of ethereal vibrations undergone any recent changes to debar or molest the communion of the soul with its spiritual father, any more than it has debarred contact with its material mother or environments?
We only understand the great laws of nature by effects. We know that vegetation planted in native soil and properly attended with light, heat and moisture, will grow and yield a certain species of fruit. We may infer how it does this, but we cannot explain the process of transformation any more than we can explain why certain tropical birds are burnished with glowing colors, and that other birds under the murky skies are gray and brown, while in the Arctic regions they bleach.
In sleep we see, without being awakened, the angry lightning rend the midnight clouds, and hear the explosive thunder hurl its fury at us; but can we explain it any more than our scientist can explain the natural forces of thought, of love and hate, or the subtle intuition of woman?
What of the silhouette or the anthelion of the Scandinavian Alps, and the aerial cities so often seen by explorers and travelers? Do not they defy the law of optics? Must we understand the intricacies of articulation and the forces back of it before we can appropriate speech? Must we discard all belief in an infinite mind because we cannot understand it, and therefore say we are not a part of it because there is no Infinite? Should we discard the belief in the infinitude of number, because we cannot understand it, and therefore say that finite number is not a part of the infinite?
No scientist or naturalist is so grossly stupid as to deny the infinite expansion of numbers? If this be so, it establishes the infinite of number, of which every finite number is a part, and thus we have a parallel in mathematics, the very cornerstone of the exact sciences, for a finite and an infinite mind. It is from the prototype of this infinite of number, namely, the infinite of intelligence, that spiritual dreams proceed. They are, therefore, the reflection of truth upon the dream mind and occur with less frequency than do dreams of the other two classes.
There are also mixed dreams, due to a multitude of incidents arising from one or more sources, which being reflected upon the mind at the same instant, produce an incoherent effect similar to that which might be produced by running the same newspaper through two or more presses all of different size type.
Again, if you sit before a mirror where flashlights of faces and other things are reflected simultaneously and instantly removed, you will fail to obtain a well-defined impression of what passed before your mind.
If you should pass on a train, at the speed of two miles a minute, through a forest of flowers and trees, your mind would be unable to distinguish one flower or tree from another.
It is in a similar way dream life and incidents may fall upon the mind.
A woman may dream of receiving a letter, and in the same connection see muddy water, or an arid landscape. Closely following, in waking life, she is astonished to receive a letter in about the same manner of her dream, but the muddy water and the arid landscape are missing.