James Monroe Buckley

“ The Christian in his personal religious experience may believe that his prayer was the element that induced God to interfere with the course of nature and prolong life. Assuming that there is a God, who made and loves men, none can show his faith irrational or unscriptural; but such testimony can be of no value to demonstrate to others a fact in the plane of science. When the Christian comes to die, he must then rest, even while praying for life, upon the promise, "My grace is sufficient for thee." ”

“ Human lives revolve about a few central points—home, business, health, friends, travel, religion, country. Dream-images are about persons and things. That there can be millions of images portrayed in the gallery of dreams, and that the great majority deal with these pivotal points of human life and human thought, taken in connection with the fact that all the events of human history, past, current, and future, revolve about these same points, make it absolutely certain that the number of coincidences must be vast. ”

“ The mind is supposed to move more rapidly in dreams than in waking thoughts. Dreams without doubt are more diversified and numerous than the waking thoughts of busy men and women absorbed in a particular routine of work, or in the necessary cares of the body, or in conversation circumscribed by conventional laws, the slow rate of speech, and the duty of listening. But it is an error to think that dream-images are more numerous than those of revery. In a single hour of revery one may see more images than he could fully describe in a volume of a thousand pages. ”

“ If dreams which depress the nervous energies and render sleep unrefreshing recur frequently, medical counsel should be taken. The habit of remembering and narrating dreams is pernicious; to act upon them is to surrender rational self-control.
A gentleman of Boston who travels much is in the habit of dreaming often of sickness and death in his family. He always telegraphs for information, but has had the misfortune never to dream of the critical events, and to be away from home when they came to pass. Still, like one infatuated with lotteries, he continues to believe in dreams. ”

“ A common experience of foreign travelers is that the mind runs over the whole field of personal interest, illuminating it as with flashes, bringing before him who pursues his way "remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow," vivid thoughts of home and friends. Such pensive states are often accompanied by intense concern, which crystallizes into conviction, that death or some other calamity has already taken place. ”

“ But the fancies of poets can give no help to him who deals with one of the darkest tragedies of humanity, the only stain on the ermine of Sir Matthew Hale,—whose fame without it would rival that of Daniel for wisdom, as it does for integrity,—and the chief stigma upon the early history of New England. Nor is witchcraft of the past only: for by many theologians it is believed to reappear in modern spiritualism, and by a multitude of Christians to be a reality, because, as they suppose, it is plainly asserted in the sacred Scriptures ”

“ High as man is placed above the creatures around him, there is a higher and far more exalted position within his view; and the ways are infinite in which he occupies his thoughts about the fears or hopes or expectations of a future life. I believe that the truth of that future cannot be brought to his knowledge by any exertion of his mental powers, however exalted they may be; that it is made known to him by other teaching than his own, and is received through simple belief of the testimony given. ”

“ The other phenomenon is, that the mind, in a voluntary or an involuntary review of the situation, will frequently pause upon one phase of it, which will predominate over others without any apparent reason. A parent absent from home may be particularly anxious about one of three children, and be for weeks under the shadow of a causeless fear. As every mental state must have a cause, in the labyrinth of associated ideas and feelings, some occasion must exist; but introspection may never reveal it. To demonstrate that the mind cannot originate presentiments is, therefore, impossible ”

“ Also, in any state not accompanied with acute pain, testimony to an immediate cure is of no value unless the disease be of an external character and actually disappears before the eye of the witness. All other cures must have the test of time; hence testimony given on the spot, at the grave of Father Mathew, or at Lourdes, or at the camp-meeting at Old Orchard, or in the Tabernacle of Mr. Simpson, can prove merely that then and there the witness was not conscious of pain or weakness, or of the symptoms of the disease which he believed he had. ”

“ But witchcraft has been restricted by usage and civil and ecclesiastical law until it signifies a voluntary compact between the devil, the party of the first part, and a human being, male or female, wizard or witch, the party of the second part,—that he, the devil, will perform whatever the person may request. The essential element in witchcraft as an offense against religion and civil law is the voluntary nature of the compact. Possession by the devil against the will, or without the consent of the subject, belongs to a radically distinct idea. ”

“ Another, whose dreams are equally numerous and pertinent, never so much as gives them a thought, and has had the good fortune to be near his family whenever urgently needed.
An extraordinary dream relating to probable or possible events may be analyzed, and anything which seems of importance in it from its own nature or the way things are stated, may wisely be made a subject of reflection. But to take a step upon a dream which would not be taken without it allies him who does it to every superstition that stultifies the godlike faculty of reason. ”

“ It is possible to realize that one is sleeping, and to make an effort to awake and seize the mental train. But the would-be sleeper resumes the favorable position, the head drops, the senses lose their receptivity, and he who spent the last hour of the evening in revery in a darkened room has undergone but a very slight change when he passes into sleep. The images still run on while the body reposes, until, according to his temperament and habits, the brain becomes calm, and the soporific influence penetrates, we cannot tell how far, into the higher regions of the sensorium. ”

“ When a certain point is reached in intoxication the will is weakened, the automatic machinery takes control, the judgment is dethroned, and images—some grotesque and others terrible—having the power of exciting the corresponding emotions, hurry through the mind until frenzy is reached, subsequent to which a heavy stupor ends the scene. When a drunken man becomes sober, his recollections of what he has done are as vague and uncertain as those of dreamers ”

“ Nightmare is something so terrible that its very name attributes its origin to the devil. The meaning of "mare" is an incubus, as of a spirit which torments persons in sleep. In nightmare the mind is conscious of an impossibility of motion, speech, or respiration, a dreadful pressure across the chest, and an awful vision of impending danger. The victim sometimes realizes his peril, gathers all his forces, struggles vainly, and endeavors to shout for help. ”

“ It seriously diminishes the influence of Christianity by subjecting it to a test which it cannot endure. It diverts attention from the moral and spiritual transformation which Christianity professes to work, a transformation which wherever made manifests its divinity, so that none who behold it need any other proof that it is of God. It destroys the ascendancy of reason, and thus, like similar delusions, it is self-perpetuating ”

“ If they beheld and understood, their testimony is conclusive; but standing alone it would be insufficient.
Yet it is rational to accept the record, although we have not the opportunity of seeing the miracles or testing the evidence by scientific methods. A miracle of wisdom may be as convincing as one of physical force. The resurrection from the dead declared of Jesus Christ could not be more contrary to the laws of nature than the conception of such a life and character as his if he never existed. His discourses are as far above human wisdom as his recorded works transcend human power. ”

“ It is claimed by astrology that mental disease is likely to occur when Mars and Saturn—to which modern research has added Uranus—are at birth in conjunction, quadrature, or opposition with Mercury and the moon, but Mercury more particularly. The "Science of the Stars," from which we take some of these coincidences (quoted by it from another work) , says: "It is by no means asserted that insanity always or even often occurs with such opposition; what is asserted is, that it rarely occurs without it." This proposition should be scrutinized, for it contains a serious if not fatal weakness. ”

“ Referring to the theory which explains the cure of many diseases by bringing the person to exercise special will power, Mr. Simpson says:
Why is it that our physicians and philanthropists cannot get the sick to rise up and exercise this will power? Oh! that is the trouble to which we have already adverted. The will is as weak as the frame, and the power that is needed to energize both is God: and Faith is just another name for the new divine WILL which God breathes into the paralyzed mind, enabling it to call upon the enfeebled body to claim the same divine power for its healing. ”

“ Most persons holding that God could at any time create a presentiment will incline to the comfortable belief that he sometimes does so, and that this is one of the means whereby he cares for those who put their trust in him. But the fact that God can produce presentiments is not in itself an evidence, nor does it even rise to the dignity of a presumption, that he will produce them. ”

“ The effects of stimuli, whether of sound, touch, smell, sight, or hearing, in modifying the dreams without awaking the sleeper—or in awaking him—all point in the same direction; and though there is always a sense of time when awaking, which proves that the mind has to some extent been occupied, in the soundest sleep it is so slight as to seem as if the person had just lain down, though hours may have passed. Whereas, just in proportion as dreams are remembered, or as the fact of dreaming can be shown by any method, is sense of time longer. ”

“ Magic, applied by the Greeks to the hereditary caste of priests in Persia, still stands in the East for an incongruous collection of superstitious beliefs and rites, having nothing in common except the claim of abnormal origin and effects. Astrology, divination, demonology, soothsaying, sorcery, witchcraft, necromancy, enchantment, and many other systems are sometimes included in magic, but each term is also employed separately to stand for the whole mass of confused beliefs which, outside of the sphere of recognized religion, attempt to surpass the limitations of nature. ”

“ Intense emotion, engendered by such a sight, would for an instant break through the stupefying power of nature's anæsthetic, as the surgeon's knife sometimes momentarily breaks the spell of ether, and the dying individual, springing, with eyes intent, features transfigured, and arms outstretched, toward the vision, would naturally pronounce the long-remembered name, and then fall back and die. ”

“ Concerning Atmospheric Astrology, which is merely a system of meteorology based on the theory that changes of the weather are produced by the influence of the planets, I shall say nothing. Mundane Astrology is in some respects more complex than either Nativities or Horary Astrology.
The nature of the influence of the heavens upon human destiny has been differently represented by different astrologers, some claiming that the heavens merely exhibit signs of events, so that when these are properly interpreted the future can be foretold, and others holding that they are causes of the events. ”

“ The case of an intelligent lady who would see a robber enter her chamber and conceal himself under her bed is in point. Though the spectacle produced violent palpitation of the heart and universal trembling, she was aware of its falsity, and after some moments her judgment and reason would triumph so that she could approach the bed and examine it without fear. ”

“ For myself I know not how much vigor is necessary to carry on vital function, and suspect that if afflicted with any disease, the heart of a victim may be found so withered, and wasted, and small as to be quite unlike a heart. He then tells him that in trying to prove the truth of the auguries he is overturning the whole system of physics, and concludes his argument in these words:
After having thus destroyed divination by the inspection of entrails, all the rest of the science of the soothsayers is at an end. ”

“ This opinion, which prevails as far as human nature is diffused, could become universal only by its truth; those that never heard of one another would not have agreed in a tale which nothing but experience could make credible. ”

“ But as all who die must die from disease, old age, accident, or intentional violence, every person must at some time be in a state when prayer cannot prolong his life.
When we or others are suffering from any malady, the Christian doctrine is that we are to use the best means at command, and to pray, "Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not my will but thine be done." The prayer may be answered by its effect upon the mind of the patient; by directing the physician, the nurse, or the friends to the use of such means as may hasten recovery ”

“ The intellect and the will being subdued by sleep, the generally excited condition of the brain and the nervous system produces a riot in the imagination.
Some rely upon dreams for evidence of acceptance with God, and of God's love. Where they have other evidences and sound reason, they do not need the help of dreams. When destitute of other evidences, it has been observed that their conduct is frequently such as no Christian, and sometimes as no moral person, could safely imitate. ”

“ CLAIMS OF "CHRISTIAN FAITH-HEALERS," TECHNICALLY SO CALLED, EFFECTUALLY DISCREDITED
In examining the healing works both of Christ and the apostles, it appears that there is not a uniform law that the sick should exercise faith, and that it was not necessary that their friends should exercise it, nor that either they or their friends should do so. Sometimes the sick alone believed; at others, their friends believed and they knew nothing about it; again, both the sick and their friends believed, and on some occasions neither the sick nor the friends. ”

“ Cicero says that if it had been so ordered by nature that we should actually do in sleep all that we dream of doing, every man would have to be bound to the bed before going to sleep. The justice of this remark is illustrated in the case of somnambulism.
The peculiarity of somnambulism which identifies it with dreaming is complete absorption of all the powers and faculties in the image. A voice falling in with that may be heard; one speaking of other matters is unnoticed. Dreamers who have never been somnambulists could, by a process of training, be transformed into such ”

“ In considering the passing from the dream state into the waling state, several analogies are to be noted. Sometimes an amusing sense of the last dream occupies the attention deliciously for a few moments. Again, it is not uncommon to pass out of a dream into a perception of the hour of the night and of the situation, sink back into sleep, and take up the thread of the dream where it had been left at the moment of returning consciousness. More frequently the dream, if resumed, will be modified by physical conditions. At other times the painful consciousness of a frightful dream remains. ”