Page:An analysis of religious belief (1877).djvu/110

 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 dreampt of,