If memory only slumbers we shall have a faint remembrance of the dream, and after a few minutes it will sometimes happen that the principal passages of the dream will occur to us more fully. The cause of this is that the memory will sometimes continue slumbering or sleeping after we are awake ourselves, and that so fully, that it may, and sometimes do, happen, that we do not immedi ately recollect where we are, nor what we have been about, or have to do. But when the memory starts into wakefulness it brings the knowledge of these things back upon us, like a flood of light, and sometimes the dream with it.

But the most curious circumstance of the mind in a state of dream, is the power it has to become the agent of every person, character and thing, of which it dreams, It carries on conversation with several, asks questions, hears auswers, gives and receives information, and it acts all these parts itself.

But however various and eccentric the imagination may be in the creation of images and ideas, it cannot supply the place of memory, with respect to things that are forgotten when we are awake, For example, if we have forgotten the name of a person, and dream of seeing him, and asking him his name, he cannot tell it; for it is ourselves asking ourselves the question.

But though the imagination cannot supply the place of real memory it has the wild faculty of counterfeiting memory. It dreams of persons it never knew, and talks with them as if it remembered them as old acquaintances. It relates circumstances that never happened, and tells them as if they had happened. It goes to places that never existed, and knows where all the streets and houses are as if it had been there before. The scenes it creates often appear as scenes remembered. It will sometimes act a dream within a dream, and in the delusion of dreaming tell a dream it never dreamed and tell it as if it was from memory. It may also be remarked, that the imagination, in a dream, has no

idea of time, as time. It counts only by circumstances; and if a succession of circumstances pass in a dream that would require a great length of time to accomplish them, it will appear to the dreamer that a length of time equal thereto has passed also.

As this is the state of the mind in dream it may rationally be said that every person is mad once in twenty-four hours, for were he to act in the day as he dreams in the night he would be confined for a lunatic. In a state of wakefulness those three faculties being all active and acting in unison constitute the rational man. In dream it is otherwise, and therefore that state which is called insanity appears to be no other than a disunion of those faculties and a cessation of the judgment, during wakefulness, that we so often experience during sleep ; and idiocity, into which some persons have fallen, is that cessation of all the faculties of which we can be sensible when we happen to wake before our memory.

In this view of the mind how absurd is it to place reliance upon dreams, and how more absurd to make them a foundation for religion; yet the belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God, begotten by the holy ghost, a being never heard of before, stands on "And behold the angel of the the story of an old man's dream. "Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, Joseph, thou son of "David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, for that which is “conceived in her is of the holy ghost." Matt. ch. 1, v. 20.

After this we have the childish stories of three or four other dreams; abont Joseph going into Egypt; about his coming back again; about this, and about that, and this story of dreams has thrown Europe into a dream for more thnn a thousand years. All the efforts that nature, reason, and conscience have made to awaken man from it have been ascribed by priestcraft and superstition to the workings of the devil, and had it not been for the American revolution, which by establishing the nniversal right of conscience, first opened the way to free discussion, and for the French revolution which followed, this religion of dreams had continued

to be preached, and that after it had ceased to be believed. Those who preached it and did not believe it, still believed the delusion necessary. They were not bold enough to be honest, nor honest enough to be bold.

I shall conclude this Essay on Dream with the two first verses of the 36 chapter of Ecclesiasticus one of the books of the Apo crypha.

v. 1. "The hopes of a man void of understanding are vain and "false; and dreams lift up fools.—Whoso regardeth dreams is like "him that catcheth at a shadow, and followeth after the wind."

I now proceed to an examination of the passages in the bible called prophecies of the coming of Christ, and to shew there are no prophecies of any such person. That the passages clandestinely stiled prophecies are not prophecies, and that they refer to circumstances tne Jewish nation was in at the time they were written or spoken, and not to any distant or future time or person.

THOMAS PAINE,

AN

EXAMINATION

OF THE

Passages in the New Testament,

QUOTED FROM THE OLD AND CALLED PROPHECIES OF THE

COMING OF

JESUS CHRIST.

THE passages called Prophecies of, or concerning, Jesus Christ

in the Old Testament may be classed under the two following heads.

First, those referred to in the four books of the New Testament, called the four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Secondly, those which translators and commentators, have, of their own imagination, erected into prophecies and dubbed with that title at the head of the several chapters of the Old Testament. Of these it is scarcely worth while to waste time, ink and paper upon, I shall therefore confine myself chiefly so those referred to in the aforesaid four books of the New Testament. If I shew that these are not prophesies of the person called Jesus Christ, nor have reference to any such person, it will be perfectly needless to combat those which translators or the church have invented, and for which they had ne other authority than their own imagination.

I begin with the book called the gospel according to St. Matthew.

"

In the first chap. v. 18, it is said "now the birth of Jesus Christ

was in this wise: when as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, "before they came together, SHE WAS FOUND WITH CHILD BY THE HOLY GHOST."-This is going a little too fast; because to make this verse agree with the next, it should have said no more than that she was found with child; for the next verse says, " Then "Joseph her husband being a just man, and not willing to make her a "public example, was minded to put her away privately."-Consequently Joseph had found out no more than that she was with child, and he knew it was not by himself.

v. 20. " And while he thought of these things" (that is, whether he should put her away privately, or make a public example of her) "behold the angel of the Lord appeared to him IN A DREAM," (that is, Joseph dreamed that an angel appeared unto him) “saying, Joseph, thou son of David fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife, "for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. And she "shall bring forth a son and call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.”

"

Now without entering into any discussion upon the merits or demerits of the account here given, it is proper to observe, that it has no higher authority than that of a dream; for it is impossible to a man to behold any thing in a dream but that which he dreams of. I ask not, therefore, whether Joseph, if there were such a man, had such a dream or not, because, admitting he had, it proves nothing. So wonderful and irrational is the faculty of the mind in dream, that it acts the part of all the characters its imagination creates, and what it thinks it hears from any of them is no other than what the roving rapidity of its own imagination invents. It is therefore nothing to me what Joseph dreamed of; whether of the fidelity or infidelity of his wife; I pay no regard to my own dreams, and I should be weak indeed to put faith in the dreams of another.