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OPINIONS OF THE POETS.

In the "Agamemnon" of Eschylus, the Chorus, supposed to consist of old men of Argos, so interrogate Clytemnestra about the manner in which she became informed of the fall of Troy, as to show that they devoutly believed in the divinity of dream-revelation. The dramatist, however, with propriety makes the impious queen scoff at the notion of trusting the opinion of her soul when asleep.

In the "Choephora," Orestes is made to draw strength and resolution for the retributive murder of his mother, from the recital of her dream; which seems to him a divine countersign of the fatal warrant for her death delivered to him by the oracle of Loxias (Apollo).

Sophocles, borrowing from Eschylus the idea of Clytemnestra's dream, makes it to be referred by Electra to the action of the unappeased furies of her murdered father, Agamemnon. The notion of a commission from the invisible world is carefully retained; and confidence is given to the avenging party in proportion as the perplexity and dismay of the queen-assassin become intensified and distracting. And the general feeling of Sophocles with reference to dreams is of this tone and of this quality.

There are passages in Euripides from which it may without difficulty be gleaned in what spirit he contemplated dreamagency. It is easy, for example, to understand that Hecuba, when she deprecated the "black-winged dreams," the offspring of "venerable earth," and sought in pious rites to avert their ill omen, regarded them as incarnate intimations, for good or evil, from the divinities. Thus recognizing them, it is in keeping that she should long for divinely informed interpretations from such prophetic natures as Helenus and Cassandra.

Pindar makes the goddess Pallas, the maiden of the dark shield, appear in a dream to the sleeping Bellerophon, bringing him a bridle with a frontlet of gold, and thus encouraging him to the adventure that has immortalized him: "Dost thou sleep, royal son of Eolus? Come, take this steed-taming

PLATO AND OTHER PHILOSOPHERS.

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spell, and sacrificing a white bull, lay it before thy Damman sire." Bellerophon, waking and acting upon the advice of a prophet whom he consulted, obeyed the dream, sacrificed a bull to Jove, built an altar to the Hippian Athene, and straightway proceeded to the easy taming of the winged steed.

Herodotus deals with historical dreams in such a way as to show that he regarded them with a reverence due to divinely originated phenomena. The stakes which men, throughout his history, hazard upon the trustworthiness of these nocturnal experiences, whether the event justify their credence or not, can be redeemed from the charge of madness only on the supposition that they were thoroughly possessed with the idea of divine intervention and direction. Thus we find the Ethiopian, Sabacon, voluntarily withdrawing from Egypt, after enjoying its sceptre for fifty years, from mere trust in the monition of dreams. Sethon, an Egyptian priest, with a mob of sutlers and artisans, successfully encountered the disciplined soldiers of Sennacherib, "king of the Arabians and Assyrians," whose arms, bows and shields, were opportunely rendered useless by the attacks of field-mice, that on the eve of battle gnawed the strings, the thongs, and the quivers. Cambyses, on the strength of a vision, caused the precautionary assassination of Smerdis, his brother. Otanes, the Persian general, repeopled Samos, which he had just before utterly deprived of its inhabitants. And a dream sufficed to win over the obstinate Artabanus to a coincidence in the plans of Xerxes, his nephew, for the invasion of Greece.

Plato and other philosophers considered dreams to be emanations of the Divinity; the astute Aristotle allowed that they might be supernaturally commissioned; and Chrysippus has this tribute in the same direction, which is all the more emphatic for coming in the shape of an assumption: “The interpretation of dreams is the power of beholding and revealing those things which the gods signify to men in dreams."

But we need not dwell here upon the opinions held by the distinguished chroniclers and thinkers of ancient heathendom;

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THE CHRISTIAN FATHERS.

nor, indeed, need we specially care to lengthen this part of our subject by the nominal citation of any individuals whatever. In other divisions we shall have an opportunity of producing these witnesses to give their own evidence in person, and a further one of culling from their examples.

The Christian Fathers, of whom shall be mentioned here only Cyprian and Augustine, have in great numbers recorded their testimony in favour of the proposition that God does often declare Himself and his will by means of dream-revelation. At the same time they recognize the fact that dreams might arise from the suggestion of the devil. Peter Martyr, in his "Commonplaces," particularizes an instance recorded by Augustine, of one possessed of the devil, who by a vision told the very hour that the priest should come to him, and by what places he would pass. And in support of this position the same learned author glances at the ancient oracles of Amphiaraus, Amphilochus, Trophonius, and Esculapius, where he says that "an evil spirit showed to them that were asleep, medicines and remedies to heal their sick folk, at which time also they gave answer as touching other matters."

But at once to overleap the centuries that separate the Fathers of the Church from the Father of English Poetry, we may decide that Chaucer-witness, especially, the arguments pro and contra in the Nonnes Preestes Tale-on the whole, favours the idea of divine interposition in dream-phenomena.

We have seen that among the heathen of old the Dii majores appeared either in person-most frequently, however, in the similitude of another-or by deputy of inferior divinities their subordinates and messengers; just as we saw Scripture dreams to be authenticated as divine, whether they were characterized by a theophanic manifestation or by angelic intervention. The doctrine of such an angelic intervention as carried with it divine foreknowledge and authority, came to be regarded with peculiar favour by a series of men of distinction in the Christian world. There is the germ of this doctrine in Spenser's unsurpassable stanzas on the "Ministra

MINISTRATION OF ANGELS.

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tion of Angels." He gives the generic activity; there is no violence done to his position by men who have given it a specific direction.

And is there care in Heaven? and is there love
In Heavenly spirits to these creatures base
That may compassion of their evils move?
There is: else much more wretched were the case
Of men than beasts: but oh! the exceeding grace
Of Highest God, that loves his creatures so;
And all his works with mercy doth embrace,
That blessed angels He sends to and fro,

To serve to wicked man-to serve his wicked foe!

How oft do they their silver bowers leave
To come to succour us that succour want!
How oft do they with golden pinions cleave
The flitting skies, like flying pursuivant,
Against foul fiends to aid us militant!

They for us fight, they watch and duly ward,

And their bright squadrons round about us plant;

And all for love, and nothing for reward:

Oh, why should Heavenly God to men have such regard ?

Now the doctrine of angelic ministration in dreams is simply a particular statement of the general proposition of angelic guardianship; and the former will be held with a strength and an intensity just in proportion to the degree in which the latter is not so much an article of languid belief as a living reality-in proportion as it is the basis of communion, rather than a sentiment that floats about the holder and does not permeate his mind and heart, or affect his life.

Bishop Ken so well loved and so strongly held the doctrine of the ministration of guardian angels as to have written an epic poem, "Hymnotheo, or the Penitent," the primary object of which seems to be the demonstration, or at least the illustration, of the fact of each individual having his guardian angel, just as each Christian country was figured to have its tutelary saint. He there commonly expects the exaltation and

relief of the human spirit, and the dispensing of divine grace, which was the working

during the "short vacation of sense

day of dreams.

In the twenty-second of those forty-two Anodynes which the good bishop wrote to alleviate the chronic and often acute suffering of more than "two lustres," occurs the following couplet :

I, waking, called my dream to mind,
Which to instruct me Heaven designed.

The last verse of a "Midnight Hymn" is to this effect :

Lord, lest the tempter me surprise,
Watch over Thine own sacrifice;
All loose, all idle thoughts cast out,

And make my very dreams devout.

Another "Midnight Hymn " concludes:

May my ethereal Guardian kindly spread

His wings, and from the tempter screen my head;
Grant of celestial light some piercing beams,

To bless my sleep, and sanctify my dreams!

And once more Ken indicates the occurrence of angelic conversations with the spirit of man during the sleep of the latter:

Oh, may my Guardian while I sleep,

Close to my bed his vigils keep;

His love angelical instil,

Stop all the avenues of ill!

May he celestial joys rehearse,

And thought to thought with me converse!

Bishop Bull was of opinion that some dreams were the vehicles of supernatural or angelic advice and premonitions.

Andrew Baxter, in his voluminous treatise on the "Immateriality of the Soul," endeavours to prove that dreams are produced by the agency of some spiritual beings, who either amuse or employ themselves seriously in engaging mankind