Black magic, therefore, must also be looked upon as by no means a mere illusion, much less as the work of evil spirits. The results it obtains at times are the work of man himself, and exist only within his own conscience. But if man can produce such marvelous effects, which lie apparently beyond the range of the material world, how much more must the Creator and Preserver of all things be able to call forth events which transcend—to our mind—the limits of the tangible world. Such occurrences, when they have a higher moral or religious purpose in view, we call Miracles, and they remain incomprehensible for all whose knowledge is confined to the physical world. Above the laws of nature there rules the Divine Will, which can do what Nature cannot do, and which we can only begin to understand when we bear in mind the fact that by the side of the visible order of the world or above it, there exist spiritual laws as well as spiritual beings. In a miracle, powers are rendered active which ordinarily remain inactive, but which exist none the less permanently in the world. Hence all great thinkers have readily admitted the existence of miracles: a Locke and a Leibnitz as well as, more recently, a Stahl and a Schopenhauer. Locke, in his "Discourse of Miracles," goes so far as to call them the very credentials of a messenger sent from God, and asserts that Moses and Christ have alike authenticated the truth and the divine character of their revelations by miracles. Even their possible continuance is believed in by those who hope that men will ever continue among us who "have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the world to come." (Hebrews vi. 5.)
DREAMS.
"To sleep—perchance to dream."—Hamlet.
Of the two parts of our being, one, spiritual and heaven-born, is always active, the other, the bodily, earth-born part, requires frequent and regular rest in sleep. During this time of repose, however, the mind also ceases apparently its operations, merely, however, because it has no longer servants at its command, who are willing and able to give expression to its activity. When the senses are asleep the mind is deprived of the usual means of communication with the outer world; but this does not necessarily condemn it to inaction. On the contrary, it has often been maintained that the mind is most active and capable of the highest achievements when released from its usual bondage to the senses. Already Æschylus in his "Eumenides" says:
The mind of sleepers acts more cunningly;
The glare of day conceals the fate of men.
It seems, however, as if the intermediate state between the full activity of wakeful life and the complete repose of the senses in sound sleep, is most favorable to the development of such magic phenomena as occur in dreams. The fact that the susceptibility of the mind is at that time peculiarly great is intimately connected with the statement recorded in Holy Writ, that God frequently revealed His will to men in dreams. If we admit the antiquity of the book of Job, we see there the earliest known announcement of this connection. "In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed; then He openeth the ears of men and sealeth their instruction" (xxxiii. 15). Next we are told that "God came to Abimelech in a dream by night" (Gen. xx. 3), and from that time we hear of similar revelations made by night in dreams throughout the whole history of the chosen people. Frequently, however, the dreams are called visions. Thus Balaam prophesied: "He hath said, which heard the words of God and knew the knowledge of the Most High, which saw the vision of the Almighty, falling into a trance, but having his eyes open." Daniel had his secret "revealed in a night vision," but such favor was denied to Saul, for "the Lord answered him not, neither by dream nor by Urim, nor by prophets." To Solomon, on the contrary, "the Lord appeared in a dream by night" many times; Joel was promised that "old men should dream dreams and young men shall see visions," a pledge quoted by St. Peter as having been amply fulfilled in his day (Acts ii. 17). For dreams did not lose their importance at the coming of Christ. To his reputed father "the Angel of the Lord appeared in a dream," bidding him to take Mary to his wife; again he was warned in a dream "not to return to Herod," and the Lord spake "to Paul in the night by a vision" more than once, as he was by a dream also sent to Macedonia.
What in these and similar cases is accepted as divine inspiration, is in secular history generally looked upon as mysterious, magic revelation; but the phenomena remain the same in all instances, and those appearing in dreams are identical with the symptoms exhibited in revelations occurring during the day, when the favored recipient is wide awake. Clairvoyance by night differs in no way from clairvoyance during the day; a state of ecstasy, a trance, is necessary in either case. That prophetic dreams generally remain unknown—outside of Holy Writ—must be ascribed to the fact that they leave no recollection behind, unless they are continued into a state of half-sleep, from which a sudden awakening takes place; and soon then they are invariably clothed in some allegoric form, and become liable to be erroneously or, at least, imperfectly interpreted. Thus dreams, like trances, often prefigure death under the form of a journey, and represent the dying man as an uprooted tree, a withered flower, or a drowning swimmer. The early Christians, foreseeing martyrdom, very frequently received in dreams an intimation of their impending fate under such symbolic forms, and, what was quite peculiar to their visions was that they often extended to the pagan jailors and keepers, whose minds had been excited by witnessing the sufferings and the constancy of their victims, and who, in many cases, became, in consequence of these dreams, converts to the new faith. The facility, however, with which such symbols can be misunderstood, has been as fatal to dreams in the estimation of most men, as the inaccurate manner in which the real revelation is often presented to the still half-sleeping mind. Hence the popular belief that dreams "go by contraries," as vulgar slang expresses it. This faith is based upon the well-established fact that a genuine dream, in the act of impressing itself upon memory, often suffers not only mutilation but actual reversion. Thus Rogers saw, in a dream, Hikey, a small, weak man, murder a powerful giant, Caulfield—in the actual encounter, which he had really foreseen, the latter killed his puny antagonist. It is, therefore, as dangerous to "believe in dreams," as to deny their value altogether and to ascribe all realizations of dreams, with, Macnish, to mere accident. ("Sleep," p. 81.) Men of cool judgment and clear mind have at all times been found on the side of believers, and even our great Franklin, with his eminently practical mind and well-known aversion to every kind of superstition, firmly trusted in views which he believed to have come to him in dreams.
Antiquity believed in dreams, not only as means by which the Gods revealed their will, but as special favors accorded to fortunate men. Thus we are told that once two men were traveling together from Arcadia to Megara; when they reached the city, one of the two remained at an inn, while the other went to stay with a a friend. Both, wearied by the journey, retired to rest; but the traveler who was at a private house dreamt in the night that his friend urged him to come to his assistance, as the innkeeper was about to murder him. Terrified by the vivid dream, he jumped up; but, upon reflection, he concluded that the whole was but an idle fancy, and lay down again. Thereupon the dream was repeated; but this time his friend added, that it was too late to come to his aid now, as he had been murdered, and his body would in the morning be carried out of the city, concealed under a load of manure. This second dream made such an impression upon the Arcadian that he went at an early hour to the city gate, and to his amazement soon saw a wagon loaded with manure approaching the place where he stood. He stopped the driver and asked him what he had hidden in his wagon? The man fled, trembling; the body of the murdered friend was found, and the treacherous innkeeper paid with his life for his crime. (Cicero, De divin.)