Three Notable Dreams

Extract

I have been a dreamer from my earliest childhood. My dreams have been of all kinds, from the most fantastic and grotesque to those that were orderly and coherent; but I have never had any others like those which I am about to describe. My ordinary dreams often take the form of short stories or adventures of various kinds; among them is one recurrent dream in which I find myself in some house in the Middle West, very hospitably entertained by hosts to whom I am an unwelcome guest. I try to go home, but eastward-bound trains are difficult to reach and the baggage-express is never available. Such experiences seem to have no important meaning. Commonly they fade with the coming of daylight and make no definite or deep impression on the mind.

Set apart from all such commonplace dreams are three visions of the night which came in quick succession, and left me, on awaking in the morning, deeply impressed with a sense of the supernatural. I have no belief that they were revelations having any source outside of my own mind and experience; but they gave me a clue to the understanding of those things that happened of old when in a dream some important revelation was made to a patriarch or prophet; and, whatever their source, they wrought a change in my thought and feeling concerning the reality and nature of the future life that still abides and after five years makes the thought of an incorporeal existence seem perfectly natural and very attractive. They have also made me understand some events in ancient history, and have given a new meaning to the belief that dreams were the favorite channels through which the divine wisdom flowed into human life.