say of dreams, if our eyes could but once have been opened
upon the bright intellectual fancies, and anticipations; or upon the
spiritual movements, of some of those by the side of whose supine and
deserted forms it may have been our privilege to watch; but who, on waking
into restored consciousness, remember not what they may have seen, or
imagined, or may perhaps have accomplished, in their sleep?

How often, within the compass of our own minds, do we not find thoughts
and images that spring from sources that we cannot trace! Have we not more
than once been called upon to perform some act of life, important to
ourselves, or perchance to others; or been in some incidental circle of
friends, or of persons who were strangers until then; or walked upon some
lonely path in Europe--all for the first time as we suppose, and yet have
we not had it irresistibly borne in upon our minds, that we have done all
this before! signed the same paper in the same presence! heard the same
voices speak the same words! noticed the same faces in the same positions!
or recognized the mountains perhaps, and the trees, the landscape, the
rocks, the very brook, as acquaintances of old; although the broad
Atlantic had never yet been crossed by us before--except in spirit!

Did you never in the day or night dream yourself to be upon some lofty
overhanging precipice? did you never in imagination look down over its
extreme verge upon the dark coast that skirts the foot of it, so far below
you that you only distinguish the Rocks themselves by the white foam of
the blue wave that breaks over them? Did you never hold by a bush while
you were bending over this awful verge, listening to the low roar of the
deep and distant waters, and perceive the Eagle itself soaring mid-way
only up the cliff--and while you grew chill with the thoughts of depth,
and danger, and distance from relief, did you never feel the bush give way
and the gravel slide from beneath you, and the whole mass come thundering
down from earth to ocean?

One throb is given to madness and in the next you wake and find the body
in security although perhaps in pain. Have you been in actual danger? do
you believe that you have been? If not, why do you immediately pray to God
and bless Him at such moments for his protection and care of you? Is it
not that while the body has been quiescent, the excursive Soul has been in
spiritual presence on the edge of that beetling and stupendous height?