moonevI DREAMS AND TRANCES 929 



Coming down to a later period we find the Chaldean Job declaring 

 that God speaketh "in a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep 

 sleep falleth upon men; theu he openeth the ears of men and sealeth 

 their instruction." The whole of the prophecies are given as direct 

 communications from the other world, with the greatest particularity of 

 detail, as, for instance, in the beginning of the book of Ezekiel, where 

 he says that " it came to pass in the thirtieth year, in the fourth month, 

 in the fifth day of the month, as I was among the captives by the river 

 of Chebar. that the heavens were opened and 1 saw visions of God." 



In the New Testament, representing the results of six centuries of 

 development beyond the time of the prophets and in intimate contact 

 with more advanced civilizations, we still have the dream as the con 

 trolling influence in religion. In the very beginning of the uew dis- 

 pensation we are told that, while Joseph slept, the angel of the Lord 

 appeared to him in a dream, and as a result "Joseph being raised from 

 sleep did as the angel of the Lord had bidden him." The most impor- 

 tant events in the history of the infant redeemer are regulated, not in 

 accordance with the ordinary manner of probabilities, but by dreams. 



The four gospels are full of inspirational dreams ami trances, such 

 as I lie vision of Cornelius, and that of Peter, when he went up alone 

 upon the housetop to pray and "fell into a trance and saw heaven 

 opened," and again when "a vision appeared to Paul in the night," of 

 a man who begged him to come over into Macedonia, so that "immedi- 

 ately we endeavored to go into Macedonia, assuredly gathering that 

 the Lord had called us." In another place Paul — the same Paul who 

 had that wonderful vision on the road to Damascus — declares that he 

 knew a man who was caught up into paradise and heard unspeakable 

 words. In Paul we have the typical religious evangel, a young enthu- 

 siast, a man of sensibility and refinement above his fellows, so carried 

 away by devotion to his ideal that he attaches himself to the most 

 uncompromising sect among his own people, and when it seems to be 

 assailed by an alien force, not content simply to hold his own belief, he 

 seeks and obtains official authority to root out the heresy. As he goes 

 on this errand, "breathiug out threatenings and slaughter," the mental 

 strain overcomes him. He falls down in the road, hears voices, and 

 sees a strange light. His companions raise him up and lead him by 

 the hand into the city, where for several days he remains sightless with- 

 out food or drink. From this time he is a changed man. Without any 

 previous knowledge or investigation of the new faith he believes himself 

 called by heaven to embrace it, and the same irrepressible enthusiasm 

 which had made him its bitterest persecutor leads him now to defend 

 it against all the world and even to cross the sea into a far country in 

 obedience to a dream to spread the doctrine. In many respects he 

 reminds us forcibly of such later evangelists as Fox and Wesley. 



The cloudy indistinctness which Wovoka and his followers ascribe to 

 the Father as he appears to them in their trance visions has numerous 

 parallels in both Testaments. At Sinai the Lord declares to .Moses, •• I 



