RELIGIOUS DREAMS dream meaning

Instances in which people owe their “conversions” to dreams are not confined to the Scriptures, but are as common to-day as at any other period of the world’s history.I have frequently questioned men as to the causes that led to their “conversion” and have occasionally elicited very curious replies. A Salvationist, for example, related the following dream, assuring me that he owed his conversion entirely to it. “I was a terrible drunkard, “he said” I drained oceans — beer, gin, brandy, methylated spirits were all the same to me; and I more often fell asleep in a dustbin than in a bed. Well, one night I dreamed I was a chimney-pot amid a veritable sea of chimney-pots of all sorts and descriptions. At first, the air, blowing up through me, was cool and pleasant, but it gradually grew hotter and hotter, and more and more smoky, until I suffered the tortures of the damned. My sides blistered, burned and cracked, and I gasped, panted and choked. ‘You are on fire!’ a cowl close beside me shrieked out, ‘ on fire! Augh!How disgusting! We shall all get black and sooty!'”Yes, listen to him roaring! Shouted another, and see how the red sparks fly! I hope he will speedily break, and then there will be an end to him! That can never be!’ thundered the voice of a gigantic, bronze weather-cock in mid-air. He is doomed to suffer to eternity; the fire that burns within him is inextinguishable!””Who is that speaking?” A meek little chimney- pot whispered.”What, don’t you know? Snapped a very” tall and angular cowl. That is Moses — Moses, the usurper of Heaven — Moses the Jew! He is now visiting every city in the world in the guise of a wWhat are his sins?””He is a drunkard!’ the weathercock ejaculated sternly. A drunkard! He drinks every drop of rain that falls on the tiles!” “The beast!’ all the cowls and chimney-pots” shouted. ‘The beast! Let us hope that he is suffering.'”Have no fear on that account,’ Moses replied; he is connected with the kitchen range, and I have given the chef strict orders to cook a forty-course dinner every night!'”And can’t I have even one drop of gravy?”I groaned.”Not a drop,’ growled the weathercock, ‘for the dinners are damned, and so are you!’ — Which so frightened me,” added the Salvationist, “that I awoke, and from that very day to this have never tasted a thimbleful of alcohol.”Another Salvationist, who attracted my attention by the vigorous manner in which he pounded the drum, informed me he owed the fact of his now being saved — and he seemed to regard it as a very sure fact — to a dream that occurred to him when he had sunk as low as any man could sink.”I had squandered two entire fortunes in drink, he said,” and, from living in a house of my own in Cadogan Gardens, was reduced to a garret in the South Lambeth Road. Not being brought up to any profession or trade, and having a serious physical defect, I could obtain no regular employment, but had to look out for odd jobs, such, for example, as carrying bags, opening carriage doors, and cleaning the brass work and windows of public, houses; and all the money I received I spent in drink. My wife had very rightly and wisely obtained a divorce from me. I was dead to all sense of decency and shame, and God alone knows in what act of outrageous devilry my wickedness might not have culminated, had it not been for the nature of the dream He sent me. I dreamed I was playing cards in a large, brilliantly illuminated nursery, my adversary being a child of about six years of age, who was seated directly opposite me. In his face and features I had little difficulty in recognising myself — that is to say, myself of long ago, when I was young and pure, without any knowledge save of what was innocent. We played some curious game that was quite new to me and which, strive how I would, I have never been able to recollect since. It was a game of speculation, and the stakes ran high, my opponent winning everything — everything, till at length I had nothing left to risk but my soul, which I staked and lost.I was then so maddened that I sprang from my seat and, seizing a knife, rushed on him and, despite the earnestness with which he pleaded, flung him on the floor, and would have stabbed him, had not the room suddenly become pitch dark, and a loud and hollow voice uttered these words: “Fool! Thou hast murdered thine own soul! Know thy hell!” Something then struck me heavily on the forehead, I lost consciousness, and on recovering, found myself in a huge kitchen garden.A spade was in my hand, and I was digging for potatoes. The sun was so tremendously hot; my back and arms ached cruelly; and I was desperately thirsty. “Curse it!” I said to myself. “I have had enough of it! The old lady may go without her dinner for all I care! I am not going to wear myself to pieces and get sunstroke for her!’ Then I dashed my spade to the ground, and, looking round, espied a pool of clear water. Revelling in the prospect of being now able to quench my thirst, I hastened to the pool, and, kneeling down, dipped my mouth in it. But alas! Try how I would, I couldn’t drink the water — every time I touched it with my lips it slipped away and I gulped at nothing. With a tin dipper, that I found lying close beside me, I tried to ladle the water out of the pool, but all to no purpose — ^the water was in the pool, and in the pool it meant to stay. At last, worn out with trying to coax the water into my mouth, and perceiving some luscious-looking plums growing on a tree nearby, I resolved to slake my thirst with them instead. But the moment I touched a plum it changed into a reel of cotton. One plum after another I touched, but there was no exception to the rule; and when at last I beheld the plum-tree, upon which I had built such hopes, groaning beneath the weight of countless reels of cotton,! Gave way to an outburst of demoniacal fury. Seizing my spade, I struck at the tree again and again, till I had lopped off all the branches and the pond was covered knee-deep in debris. I then essayed to get back to the potato plot, but found I could not stir — I had walled myself in, and the cotton had twisted itself in countless layers round my legs, binding them firmly together. In this deplorable plight I was compelled to stand hour after hour with the sun scorching me mercilessly, and my throat becoming more and more parched and blocked. I cannot describe the sufferings I endured; no devil in hell could have fared worse. At length I fainted; there was a delicious blank, and on coming to myself the garden had vanished, and I found that I was — well, it took me a long time to make out what I was, but I at length discovered — that I was a pair of high-heeled boots, and that I had on the top of me a pair of feet — red-hot, perspiring feet that chafed my skin, squashed me in all my most tender parts, and dragged me with them over sharp, jagged stones, hot asphalt pavements — the smell of which made me retch and vomit — dusty roads that blinded me, and tarry roads that stuck together my lips and eyelids. The torments of purgatory are not to be compared with those I was now compelled to undergo. Whenever I endeavoured to halt, the toe-nails stabbed me in the stomach, the ankle bones prodded my ribs, and the heels came down with extra pressure on my liver — a combination of tortures no one could endure. On and on I toiled, and one and all mocked me.”He! He! He!” laughed the garbage in the gutter, you’ve got a nice fourteen-stoner on you! She’ll walk you threadbare! “Jerusalem! You’re in for it! Sniggered drain -pipe. Do you know who’s wearing you?Why, Lot’s wife! She’s a Suffragette now, and when I tell you her feet move as fast as her tongue you know what’s in store for you. Talk about rods in pickle!’ and the drain -pipe went into a disgusting fit of laughter. ‘Won’t some one stop her?’ I panted. ‘Stop her!’ screamed a dirty cat’s tail I barely avoided treading on. ‘Stop her! Why, nothing will stop her, she’s got the latest improved turbine boiler! Take care she doesn’t go too fast, that’s all!’ Scarcely were the words uttered before I found myself being whirled along at a terrific pace — up, down, dash, smash, through pebbles and puddles, on and on I flew, and I saw all around me thousands of other boots and shoes, all propelled by gigantic, never-tiring Suffragettes, who covered the ground with prodigious, elephantine bounds. This terrible punishment went on for days and nights, till I at length grew so thin that there was scarcely anything left of me. Sometimes I was baked, sometimes drowned, whilst, at all times, my inside and outside were torn and mangled.Then, to my immeasurable joy, I was kicked off, and for some brief moments enjoyed perfect rest.From this happy state I was abruptly awakened, to find myself sitting bound and gagged in a high- backed chair. Bending over me was a very tall and slender dentist with a big, round, babyish face and happy, innocent smile. In one hand he held a huge pair of forceps, and in the other the needle of the whirling instrument used for boring holes in teeth prior to filling them. ‘I am Paul’ he said, ‘ and it is my unpleasant task to attend to your mouth every day. I shall first of all extract your teeth, then replace them, and, lastly, fill them. It will hurt you frightfully, but you must be patient; and I shall keep on at it till you cease swearing and begin of your own accord to repeatThe Old Hundredth, when your punishment will cease, and you will find yourself on the high road to Heaven. Now!’ And here I could stop him, he thinks the forceps into my mouth and began pulling. Pain! The pain was unendurable, inconceivable! All my previous sufferings were as nothing to it. And with the extraction of each tooth it increased. At last he stopped, and, with the perspiration trickling down his face, pointed to a bloody pile on the floor. ‘There they are,’ he said ‘ thirty-two of them! The toughest to draw imaginable. Now I shall stick them in again and fill them!’ He did so, and the torture was so great that over and over again I swooned. For twenty hours he whirled away first at one root and then at another, piercing the gums and pricking the nerves; and the more I implored him to stop the more he hurt me. At last he finished, the whirling instrument was laid aside, and with the tip of my bleeding tongue I felt, in each tooth, a hole big enough to hold an egg. “Do you see this? ‘ he said, holding up a bottle. Its Scotch whiskey, and I’m going to fill your teeth with it. You will then know what it is to have your head full of alcohol and your stomach empty. You will smell it; its fumes will tickle your throat, and yet you will not be able to satisfy your cravings for it; and this punishment will continue till you earnestly repent of your misspent life.'”He lifted up the bottle, and the next moment” I felt its burning contents poured into the hollow of my teeth. It was in vain that I besought him for one drop, wherewith to moisten my parched throat. Not one drop did he spill, not one drop fell out; and not one drop could I remove with the tip of my tongue, though my throat was ten thousand times more a-thirst than it had ever been before. The smell of the whiskey drove me mad. I prayed for it, I cried for it, I tore whole pieces out of my tongue as I beat and prodded it against the jagged edges of my teeth. But all to no purpose; my head remained full and my stomach empty.”A whole lifetime seemed to pass in this tantalising, agonising manner, and then into the room, in Indian file, stalked all my friends and relations, each carrying in their hands a champagne glass. My uncle, who had been dead and buried at the very least thirty years, headed the procession. Walking solemnly up to me, he took hold of my nose, twisted it round like a tap, and down through my foaming mouth poured the whiskey. As soon as his glass was full he raised it above his head, and exclaimed in a sepulchral voice, ‘ Health! Health! Health!’ to which all the company in chorus responded ‘ Amen! Amen! Amen!’ One after another my relatives and friends followed his example, and twisted my nose till the whiskey flowed. And all the while the alcohol poured from me, and I saw them gulp it down, my thirst and craving for it grew, and I besought and implored them to spare me a drop — just one drop, one tiny drop. But they shook their heads, and murmured. ‘Serve you right! Ask Paul, and see what he says.’ And none of them pitied me, till my youngest niece, Dorothy, whom I had many a time in her childhood half scared to death by my tipsy antics, and who had lately joined the Salvation Army, came into the room, and, on seeing my mother-in-law slyly give my sore and bleeding nose a vicious twist, at once ran up to her and pulled her away, crying out, ‘ For shame! Poor uncle! See how you have hurt him!’ And as she fetched some cold spring water, and bathed and bandaged me, I grew heartily ashamed of my past conduct towards her, and from the very depths of my heart asked her pardon. To my delight, she kissed me — the first true kiss of affection I had had for years; and no sooner did her lips touch my cheeks than quite voluntarily I began to chant ‘ The Old Hundredth.’ As I did so, room and people vanished, and I found myself standing, strong and upright in the open air, bathed in the glorious light of a heavenly sunset; and in this delirium of joy I awoke. That was the dream, and its effect was such, that from that very night I never drank another drop of alcohol. I forthwith became enrolled in the Salvation Army, in which — praise be to God! — I have ever since remained.”