pauses of the night, and visiting the guilty in phantasms, in midnight terrors, and in dreams.

Of the prophetic power of dreams volumes might be written. The ignorant common people, who are gulled by dream-interpreters, dream-books, oracles of a greater fatuity than even the untaught and pretended astrologers; such people, having an untrained brain and much imagination, place great faith in dreams. Such faith is, however, mere faith it depends not upon reason, but upon the want of it; not upon proof and experience, but upon prejudice. But notwithstanding this, we are quite ready to believe that very few people exist who do not know, or at least talk about, some particular dream. One has need to well sift these stories, and, when sifted, to employ a little thought upon them.

Waking, the process of thought is gradual, often slow and deliberate. Dreaming, it is the reverse. "A very remarkable circumstance, and an important point of analogy," says Dr. Forbes Winslow, "is to be found in the extreme rapidity with which the mental operations are performed [in dreams], or, rather, with which the material changes on which the ideas depend are excited in the hemispherical ganglia. It would seem as if a whole series of acts, that would really occupy a long lapse of time, pass ideally through the mind in one instant. We have in dreams no true perception of the lapse of time-a strange property of mind! for if such be also its property when entered into the eternal disembodied state, time will appear to us eternity."

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Let us then divide the dreams into two heads. First, the serious, solemn, and reiterated dream; and secondly, the futile or idle dream. The latter more often comes true, yet the instances of the former are alone related. A. meets B., and is invited to dinner. At dinner some particular subject of conversation is started. A. starts, and cries out, "God bless me! why, I remember now that I dreamed I dined with you, and that we talked about so-and-so," using the very words. The occurrence is treated, very properly, as a singular coincidence, and little more is thought of it. But if, as was the case with Andrew Marvell's father, a godly minister," going to a christening party, talks very seriously of his death, of his being warned in a dream, and returning, as he is about to cross the estuary, throws his staff ashore, and cries out, "Ho, for heaven!" and that afterwards the boat goes down in the middle of the stream and he is drowned; if such occurs, as it really did, then solemn people talk about a miraculous dream; and in effect it was so. But how often do godly ministers dream that which never comes true! How often do wives, like Cæsar's wife, dream that their husband's horse stumbles, or the train runs off the rail, or that the object of their love is brought home a mangled mass of shapeless humanity! How often do they dream such, and yet receive their husband safe and sound! The fact is, that the verification of a dream is the exception; its total "nullification," if we may use an American coinage, is the rule. Macnish tells us that "the verification of a dream necessitates the suspension of a law of nature, and is there

fore, in essence, a miracle.” Perhaps he is right. If we were only wise enough to believe that the great Ruler makes no utterly unalterable law; that he governs, teaches, and rules mankind, in some way, with or without infringing laws which he has made-we might believe that dreams were sometimes agents of the Lord; that, like Joseph, we might be "warned of God in a dream.” It is certainly not inconsistent with His justice, nor with the known law of conscience, that the murderer of Maria Martin should be, as he undoubtedly was, discovered by a dream, dreamed repeatedly by the victim's mother; nor will it be inconsistent with the mercy of the great Ruler that Colonel Gardiner, on the eve of a guilty assignation, should be warned, and turned from his sinful purpose, by a dream. Mr. Vanderkiste, an excellent city missionary, relates, in his work on the Dens of London, a dream by which a young woman was prevented from committing murder; and, in the month of January, ten years ago, a curious dream was published in the papers, which was verified by the address of the dreamer, and by personal inquiry. A woman's husband lay convalescent in the hospital; the wife dreamed that he choked himself with a piece of meat, and ran to inquire about him. The answer given was, that the husband was well, and was at that moment eating his dinner. She turned away, and at that moment her husband did choke himself; and although surgical aid was at once on the spot, and his throat was opened, he died. Here, then, was a futile dream without adequate result; and here we must leave the subject of mental history and phenomena.

We know very little what we do know we had better use in humility and faith. Even a dream may serve the purpose of Providence, or it may be simply ridiculous and empty. Man, at least, is not the only animal that dreams. Horses whinny and plunge in their sleep; cats catch mice, and in imagination start and purr; and dogs try over again the hunt :

"The stag-hounds, weary with the chase,

Lay, stretched upon the rushy floor,
And urged, in dreams, the forest race,

From Teviot Stone to Eskdale Moor."

:

ON TAKING HEED OF TO-MORROW.

MONGST many of the ideas of a perfectly innocent life, which some persons take up, there appears to be one which delights in such an ex

treme generosity and want of caution, that people who take care of themselves pass for stingy, mean, and unworthy persons. It is a common saying which attaches itself to a man who is prudent, “ Ah, he knows how to take care of himself!" as if doing so absolutely detracted from his virtue and value.

In good truth, this knowledge does nothing of the sort. A man or a woman who knows how to take care of himself or of herself, is much the better person for it. If a man does not know how to take care of himself, how shall he know how to take care of others? The objection to the philosopher of old, who wanted to advise others how to govern a State when he could not govern his own wife, holds good here. So much is this the case, that in every community the first men are those who know "how to take care of themselves," and, having ne that pretty well, they learn how to take care of others.

ng this in a large way, and finding that system, and