SECOND PART.
MEANS OF COMMUNICATION DOWNWARDS.
CLASSIFICATION.
We proceed now from the several methods by which men, in all ages and in all countries, have sought to convey their wishes, aspirations, and emotions upwards, to those by which their several deities have in their opinion conveyed their commands, decisions, and intentions downwards. The classification will follow as closely as the subject permits that of the preceding part. Consecration, the quality pertaining to man's instruments of communication with God, will be replaced by holiness, the quality pertaining to God's instruments of communication with man. Thus, corresponding to the consecrated actions of prayer, sacrifice, and praise, we shall have the holy events of omens, signs, miracles, and so forth. Corresponding to the consecrated places where men pay their devotions, we shall find the holy places which some higher being has blessed with tokens of his presence. Corresponding to the consecrated objects bestowed by the creature on the Creator, we shall discover holy objects through which some peculiar grace is conveyed by the Creator to the creature. To consecrated men will correspond holy men, who speak to their fellows with an authority higher than their own; and these holy men will fall into two classes, those whose regular work it is to represent the deity on earth and those who are sent on some special occasion for some special purpose. Lastly, a separate division (having no correlative among means of communication upwards) must be given to holy books, for a most important place in the history of religions is occupied by treatises written by the gods for the use of men. To these then the final chapter of this portion of the work must be devoted. Pass we now to holy events.
CHAPTER I.
HOLY EVENTS.
Manifold beyond the possibility of complete computation are the signs and intimations vouchsafed to the ignorance and weakness of man by the celestial powers. They speak to him through the ordinary phenomena of nature; they instruct him through her rare and more striking exhibitions; they guide his footsteps through prodigies and marvels. Sometimes addressing him spontaneously, without any attempt on his part to elicit their intentions, they open their views or announce the future; sometimes replying to his anxious inquiries, they point out the truth and relieve his perplexity. Consider first the former class of divine manifestations, in which the human being is a merely passive recipient of the communication granted.
Dreams are an excellent example of this class of events. The belief that they are of supernatural origin is both wide-spread and ancient. Possibly there is no country in which it has not been held to a greater or less extent, even though it may not have formed an article in the established creed. Among the Africans in and about Sierra Leone, for example, a dream is received as judicial evidence of witchcraft, and the prisoner accused on this slender testimony "frequently acknowledges the charge and submits to his sentence without repining" (N. A., vol. i. p. 260). On the American continent, where dreams (says Charlevoix) "are regarded as true oracles and notices from heaven" (H. N. F., vol. iii. p. 348), it is plain that the like faith in their intimations prevails. Although explained in a variety of ways, now as the rational soul going abroad, while the sensitive soul remained behind, now as advice from the familiar spirits, now as a visit from the soul of the object dream pt of, the dream is always regarded as a sacred thing. It was thought to be the most usual way taken by the gods of making their wills known to men. Hence they took care to obey the intimations given in dreams; a savage who had dreamt that his little finger was cut off actually submitting to that operation; and another, who had found himself in his dream a prisoner among enemies, getting himself tied to a stake and burnt in various parts of the body (H. N. F., vol. iii. pp. 353, 354). The Jews have in their ritual a singular ceremony for removing the influence of bad dreams. The person who has dreamt something which seems to portend evil, is said to choose three friends, and standing before them as they sit, to repeat seven times: "A good dream have I seen." To which they reply: "A good dream thou hast seen; it is good and shall be good; the compassionate God, who is good, make it good." And the conversation between the dreamer and the interpreters continues for some time, the general effect being to convey God's blessing to the former and convert his trouble into gladness. At the end the interpreters say: "Go eat thy bread with joy, and drink thy wine with a cheerful heart, for God now accepteth thy works. And penitence and prayers and righteousness will set aside the evil that hath been doomed, and peace be unto us and unto all Israel, Amen." To this the author of the book appends the remark that "the Jews believe that all dreams come to pass according to the interpretation that is made of them," for which reason they relate their dreams to none but friends (Rel. of Jews, p. 71-74). But that they can believe it to be in the power of their friends to change the meaning of the dream by an arbitrary interpretation seems scarcely possible. It may, therefore, be the meaning of this passage that an unfavorable interpretation is in itself ominous of misfortune, or that they are desirous not to hear the worst construction that can be put upon a dream.
Belief in the prophetic signification of dreams is not only not discountenanced by the Christian religion, but is explicitly taught by it. If in the present age this belief has fallen somewhat out of repute, this is not because there can be any doubt that the inspired writers of the Christian Scriptures firmly held it, but is a feature of the general relaxation of the bonds of dogma which characterizes the modern mind. To take a few instances: when Abraham had called Sarah his sister, and thus permitted the king of Gerar to appropriate her, God himself came to Abimelech by night in a dream, and told him that she was a married woman (Gen. xx. 3). Highly important information as to the future of his race was given to Jacob in a dream (Gen. xxviii. 11-15). His son Joseph enjoyed an extraordinary faculty, not only of dreaming true dreams himself, but also of interpreting the dreams of others. It was his own prophetic dreams which led to his sale into the hands of the traders by his brothers, and it was his power of correct interpretation which both freed him from his prison in Egypt, and led to his promotion to the high office he afterwards held at the Egyptian court (Gen. xxxvii., 5-11; Gen. xl., xli). Moreover, Joseph, who must be considered an authority on the subject, expressly informed Pharaoh, when that monarch had related his dreams that God had showed him what he was about to do (Gen. xli. 25-28). A most important dream was granted to Solomon, to whom "the Lord appeared in a dream by night," and told him to ask whatever favor he might wish: on which occasion the king preferred his celebrated request for wisdom (1 Kings iii., 5-15). Another ruler, Nebuchadnezzar, was also visited by a prophetic dream, the nature of which was revealed to the interpreter, Daniel, "in a night vision," by God himself, who thus admitted that it was he who had sent it. A further communication was made to Nebuchadnezzar, in the dream which he himself has recorded in the proclamation which bears witness at the same time to the fulfillment of its warning (Daniel ii., iv). But of all the dreams handed down to us by the Scriptural writers, by far the most material, as evidence of their Divine character, is that on which the mystery of the Incarnation mainly rests. Take away the dream in which Joseph was informed that the Holy Ghost was the parent of Mary's first-born child (Matt. i. 20), and that mystery will depend exclusively on a story of an angel's visit, of necessity related by Mary herself (Luke i. 35); for obvious reasons not the most trustworthy witness on so delicate a point. But this is not all; for it was by a dream that the Magi, after their adoration, were warned to escape the vengeance of Herod (Matt. ii. 12); and by a dream that the life of the infant Christ was preserved in the massacre of the innocents (Matt. ii. 13). Christianity, therefore, may be said to owe its very existence to the celestial intimations conveyed in dreams, and Christians cannot consistently embrace any theory which would lead to a denial of their holy and prophetic character. Since, moreover, we have numerous instances in the Bible of such dreams being granted to heathens and idolaters it is plain that the Christian deity does not confine his nocturnal visitations to orthodox believers. If the chief butler, the chief baker, Pharaoh, and Nebuchadnezzar dreamt prophetically, so may any of us at any time according to this teaching. On the other hand, this power may be due to a special outpouring of the Holy Spirit, as implied in the prediction of Joel that "your sons and your daughters shall prophecy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions" (Joel ii. 28). So that we may completely endorse the conclusion of the Rev. Principal Barry, who discusses this subject with much solemnity in Smith's "Dictionary of the Bible," "that the Scripture claims the dream, as it does every other action of the human mind, as a medium through which God may speak to man, either directly, that is, as we call it, 'providentially,' or indirectly, in virtue of a general influence upon all his thoughts; but whether there is anything to be said in support of the further inference that 'revelation by dreams' may be expected to pass away, is not equally clear." Assuredly no passage can be produced which, even by implication, states that this method of communication was temporary or transient; and considering that it continued in operation from the days of Abraham to those of Jesus, it is hard to see how the Bible can be made to support the notion that it is to cease entirely at any period of human history. On the contrary, the Scriptural writers, both old and new, would practically have agreed with Homer: "The dream also is from Zeus" (Iliad, i. 63). Indeed, the passage in which that deity sends the personified Dream to bear a message to Agamemnon (Ibid., ii. 8-15), differs only in its mythological coloring from the representations in the Bible of dreams in which God comes or appears to the sleeper, or in which he charges an angel to convey to him his purpose or his will. And the discrimination commanded to be exercised between prophecies or dreams deserving attention, and prophecies or dreams contrived merely to test the fidelity of the Israelites, and therefore not to be received as true, fully corresponds to the distinction drawn in the Odyssey between dreams passing through the iron gate, and dreams passing through the ivory gate. Those that came through the horn gate brought true intimations; but those that came through the ivory gate were sent to deceive (Od. xix. 560-568).
Another involuntary action through which God communicates with man is sneezing. From the lowest savages to the most educated nation on the face of the earth, this simple physical event is viewed as an omen. A peculiarity attending this particular kind of manifestation is, that it is usual for those present when it occurs to notice it by saying something of favorable augury. In Samoa, one of the Polynesian islands, it was common to say, "Life to you!" (N. Y., p. 347.) an exclamation which in sense corresponds almost exactly to the German "Gesundheit!" (health) to the Italian "Salute!" and to our own "God bless you!" on the same occasion. South African savages have the same sentiment of the religious nature of the omen involved in sneezing. Thus, among the Kafirs we learn that "it used always to be said when a man sneezed, 'May Utikxo [God] ever regard me with favor.'" Canon Callaway, who has acutely noticed the parallelism among various nations in respect of the feeling associated with this action, further informs us that "among the Amazulu, if a child sneeze, it is regarded as a good sign; and if it be ill, they believe it will recover. On such an occasion they exclaim, 'Tutuka,' Grow. When a grown up person sneezes, he says, 'Bakiti, ngi hambe kade,' Spirits of our people, grant me a long life. As he believes that at the time of sneezing the spirit of his house is in some especial proximity to him, he believes it is a time especially favorable to prayer, and that whatever he asks for will be given; hence he may say, 'Bakwiti, inkomo,' Spirits of our people, give me cattle, or 'Bakwiti, abntwana,' Spirits of our people, give me children. Diviners among the natives are very apt to sneeze, which they regard as an indication of the presence of the spirits; the diviner adores by saying, 'Makosi,' Lords, or Masters" (R. S. A., part i. p. 64). A similar belief prevails among the Parsees, who consider a sneeze as a mark of victory obtained over the evil spirits who besiege the interior of the body by the fire which animates man, and who accordingly render thanks to Ahuramazda when this event happens (Z. A., vol. ii. p. 598).