]
* * * * *
Pantheism and idolatry naturally end in each other; for all extremes meet.
The Judaic religion is the exact medium, the true compromise.
_May_ 1. 1823.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN STORIES OF DREAMS AND GHOSTS.
--PHANTOM PORTRAIT.--WITCH
OF ENDOR.--SOCINIANISM.
There is a great difference in the credibility to be attached to stories of
dreams and stories of ghosts. Dreams have nothing in them which are absurd
and nonsensical; and, though most of the coincidences may be readily
explained by the diseased system of the dreamer, and the great and
surprising power of association, yet it is impossible to say whether an
inner sense does not really exist in the mind, seldom developed, indeed,
but which may have a power of presentiment. [1]
All the external senses have their correspondents in the mind; the eye can
see an object before it is distinctly apprehended;--why may there not be a
corresponding power in the soul? The power of prophecy might have been
merely a spiritual excitation of this dormant faculty. Hence you will
observe that the Hebrew seers sometimes seem to have required music, as in
the instance of Elisha before Jehoram:--"But now bring me a minstrel.
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