On Dreams

The treatise before this one embraced that first class of heaven-sent dreams, in which, as we said, the Deity of His own motion sends to us the visions which are presented to us in sleep. In the present treatise we shall, to the best of our ability, bring before our readers dreams which find their right place under our second head.

The second kind of dreams is that in which our own mind, moving out of itself together with the Mind of the Universe, seems to be possessed and God-inspired, and so capable of receiving some foretaste and foreknowledge of things to come.

The first dream belonging to the class thus indicated is that which appeared to the dreamer on the stairway of Heaven:

“And he dreamed, and behold a stairway set up on the earth, of which the top reached to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending upon it. And the Lord stood firmly on it; and He said, ‘I am the God of Abraham thy father and the God of Isaac; fear not; the land whereon thou sleepest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed; and thy seed shall be as the sand of the earth, and shall spread abroad to the west and the south and the north and the east; and in thee shall be blessed all the tribes of the earth, and in thy seed. And, behold, I am with thee, guarding thee in every way by which thou goest, and will bring thee back into this land, for I will by no means forsake thee, until I have done all things whatsoever I have spoken unto thee’ ” (Gen. 28:12–15).