Friday night's dream, on Saturday told Is sure to come true, be it never so old.

- Nursery Rhyme.

The idea that dreams meant something, that they are sent for a particular purpose to warn us against a calamity that threatens to approach or to point out to us a particular duty to perform, is made very familiar to us by the Bible story. Therein we read repeated accounts of old men seeing visions and young men dreaming dreams, and it seems to have been the common and natural opinion of that time that these appearances could not have occurred for nothing. Often it is quite a different view from that we have seen held by savage races, that the appearances seen in dreams were actually substantial things, that they were really seen with the eyes, and not, as we believe, fancied. In some cases God or His Angel are spoken of as actually appearing. But another view prevails. Joseph saw in a dream the sheaves of corn bowing to the monster sheaf. He saw it " in a dream," that is to say, saw it with the eye not of sense but of the mind. He did not suppose, as the savage would have thought, that he himself - him self, but part of himself, his secondary self only - had gone, during sleep, to a cornfield and seen sheaves really behaving in this astonishing way. Apparently he knew quite well that his eyes had not seen these things at all, but that his mind had fancied them.

So far his point of view was just what ours would be to - day. But from that point his opinion would begin to show a great divergence. For whereas most of us would dismiss the whole thing from our mind, perhaps with the observation that it was "a funny dream" he, on the other hand, was convinced that this dream could only have come to him by supernatural inspiration: he held that it was sent to him for some purpose, to warn him of some coming event; and it behoved him, in humble gratitude for the premonition, to do his best to find out why it had been sent and what it was intended to foretell. Well, with the result we are all well acquainted. It is a typical instance of the analogical interpretation of a dream, a system that was held in very high favour by most of the ancient oneiro - critics, or interpreters of dreams. But before we take a glance, in a cursory way, at the different oneiro - critical systems, it will be rather interesting to notice the divisions marked by Seafield of the dreams that the Bible has thought worthy of mention. It is not always easy to follow Seafield very exactly.

Though his book shows an immense amount of research, it hardly seems as if the results were put before the reader as kindly, as clearly, and in as systematic a manner as he has something of a right to expect. Seafield thus describes the biblical dreams under three headings.

1. Dreams that come from God.

2. Dreams that come from an agent of the devil pretending to be an angel or from a human false prophet.

3. Accidental dreams as we may call them, i.e., dreams not purposely suggested.

And the first of these headings is again to be subdivided into (a) dreams in which God Himself is manifested, and (b) dreams in which the divine message is brought by an angel.

As references to the third, the accidental kind of dreams, Seafield quotes Job xx. 8: "He shall fly away as a dream, and shall not be found; yea, he shall be chased away as a vision of the night." Psalm lxxiii. 20: "As a dream when one awake th; so, O Lord, when thou awakest thou shalt despise their image." Isaiah xxix. 7, 8: "The multitude of all the nations that fight against Ariel, even all that fight against her and her munition, and that distress her, shall be as a dream of a night vision. It shall even be as when a hungry man dreameth, and, behold, he eateth; but he awaketh, and his soul is empty: or, as when a thirsty man dreameth, and, behold, he drinketh; but he awaketh, and, behold, he is faint, and his soul hath appetite: so shall the multitude of all the nations be that fight against Mount Zion."

Seafield adds "A propos of such passages, Dr. Lee judiciously observes 'when the sacred writers do not refer to divine revelation, or to the means by which it is imparted, we observe how carefully they indicate their clear appreciation of the fact that ordinary dreams and visions are altogether valueless "

At the same time it is to be noted as a significant fact that all the passages quoted by Seafield, as showing that the Bible writings entertained the idea of a class of dreams that were altogether without importance, are taken from writers of comparatively late date, from Job, Psalms and Isaiah, and while there is, of course, no doubt whatever that dreams have been regarded as a means of communication between God and man all through the ages of the Bible story, and even down to the present day, still there is not a little doubt whether at the date of the earlier books all dreams were not regarded as communications from the supernatural, sometimes conveying a direct and simple message, sometimes, as in Joseph's case, conveying instruction by analogy that could only be understood by study and skilled interpretation. And whereas in the oldest dreams we commonly find God speaking in person to the dreamer, in the later we commonly find the communication made by the agency of an angel, as if the Divine Majesty withdrew itself further and further from the ken of its sinful creatures.

As instances of his first class of biblical dreams, Seafield quotes Genesis xx. 3: "God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him. Behold, thou art but a dead man, for the woman which thou hast taken; for she is a man's wife." Genesis xxxi. 24: "God came to Laban the Syrian in a dream by night, and said unto him, Take heed that thou speak not to Jacob either good or bad"; and I. Kings iii. 5: "In Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night: and God said, Ask what I shall give thee."

As instances of the angelic communication in dreams, we have Genesis xxxi. 11: "And the angel of God spake unto me in a dream, saying,' Jacob '; and I said, ' Here am I,'" and, from the New Testament St. Matthew i. 20: " Behold the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, ' Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife.'" Later, Joseph was "warned of God in a dream " (whether directly or by agency of an angel we are not told) and again, "The angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, ' Arise, and take the young Child and His mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there till I bring thee word, for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.'" St. Matthew ii. 13.