The text above does not teach that God speaketh in all dreams, but that He is pleased sometimes (and the writer believes very occasionally) to communicate instruction by such means. He that made the soul can approach it by any avenue He pleases, and is shut out from none.
Winters and summers, as many as fourteen, have rolled over my head since the night made memorable by "a brother's dream." Thirteen years have likewise passed since my arms were placed beneath this dying brother—since the glad angels conveyed his sweet spirit to the paradise of God.
Oh, the heavenly smile—oh, the beaming eye he cast upon me—as he gently subsided into endless rest! Never shall I forget that scene. Never will be erased from memory's tablet that chamber, and all that there I felt, and saw, and heard.
"Friend after friend departs;
Who has not lost a friend?"
Come, then, all sympathizing hearts; come, ye who know what sorrow is; come, all who
"feel an aching void,
The world can never fill,"
and listen to "a brother's dream."
Brought up to attend public worship, and under religious instruction, the period when spiritual life first animated his soul is not known to any survivors; nor, also, what were the peculiar exercises of his mind during the first year or two of his Christian life.
Up to the time of his dream, he was associated with many of those whose religion consists chiefly in name and show, carnal excitement, and flesh-pleasing formality; and, being of a very cheerful disposition, and generally beloved by all who knew him, it needed no small effort—nothing short of divine power—to sever the confederacy.
As will always be the case where the life of God is, his soul began to languish and starve under the "Yea and nay," "Do and live," orations to which he from time to time listened. He could not feed on husks. Distressed, hungry, and thirsty, his soul at last fainted. Then he cried unto God in his trouble. Full of vexation and perplexity, not knowing where to go or what to do, he dreamed.