Who that has come to middle age does not know how dreams sometimes
remind him painfully of what he once was, of what he would be still,
without God's grace? How in his dreams he finds himself tempted by
the old sins; giving way to the old meannesses, weaknesses, follies?
How dreams remind him, awfully enough, that though his circumstances
have changed,--his opinions, his whole manner of life, have changed--
yet he is still the same person that he was ten, twenty, thirty,
forty years ago, and will be for ever? Nothing bears witness to the
abiding, enduring, immortal oneness of the soul like dreams when they
prove to a man, in a way which cannot be mistaken--that is, by making
him do the deed over again in fancy--that he is the same person who
told that lie, felt that hatred, many a year ago; and who would do
the same again, if God's grace left him to that weak and sinful
nature, which is his master in sleep, and runs riot in his dreams.
Whether God sends to men in these days dreams which enable them to
look forward, and to foretell things to come, I cannot say. But this
I can say, that God sends dreams to men which enable them to look
back, and recollect things past, which they had forgotten only too
easily; and that these humbling and penitential dreams are God's
warning that (as the Article says) the infection of nature doth
remain, even in those who are regenerate; that nothing but the
continual help of God's Spirit will keep us from falling back, or
falling away.

Again: those sad thoughts which weigh on the mind when lying awake
at night, when all things look black to a man; when he is more
ashamed of himself, more angry with himself, more ready to take the
darkest view of his own character and of his own prospects of life,
than he ever is by day,--do not these thoughts, too, come from God?