The Purcell Papers — Volume 1Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan
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The Purcell Papers — Volume 1
Le Fanu, Joseph Sheridan
Fantasy fiction, English; Ireland -- Fiction
Dreams! What age, or what country of the world, has not and acknowledged
the mystery of their origin and end? I have thought not a little upon
the subject, seeing it is one which has been often forced upon my
attention, and sometimes strangely enough; and yet I have never arrived
at anything which at all appeared a satisfactory conclusion. It does
appear that a mental phenomenon so extraordinary cannot be wholly
without its use. We know, indeed, that in the olden times it has been
made the organ of communication between the Deity and His creatures; and
when, as I have seen, a dream produces upon a mind, to all appearance
hopelessly reprobate and depraved, an effect so powerful and so lasting
as to break down the inveterate habits, and to reform the life of an
abandoned sinner, we see in the result, in the reformation of morals
which appeared incorrigible, in the reclamation of a human soul which
seemed to be irretrievably lost, something more than could be produced
by a mere chimera of the slumbering fancy, something more than could
arise from the capricious images of a terrified imagination; but once
presented, we behold in all these things, and in their tremendous and
mysterious results, the operation of the hand of God. And while Reason
rejects as absurd the superstition which will read a prophecy in every
dream, she may, without violence to herself, recognise, even in
the wildest and most incongruous of the wanderings of a slumbering
intellect, the evidences and the fragments of a language which may be
spoken, which HAS been spoken, to terrify, to warn, and to command. We
have reason to believe too, by the promptness of action which in the
age of the prophets followed all intimations of this kind, and by the
strength of conviction and strange permanence of the effects resulting
from certain dreams in latter times, which effects we ourselves may have
witnessed, that when this medium of communication has been employed
by the Deity, the evidences of His presence have been unequivocal. My
thoughts were directed to this subject, in a manner to leave a lasting
impression upon my mind, by the events which I shall now relate, the
statement of which, however extraordinary, is nevertheless ACCURATELY
CORRECT.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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