Thomas Wingfold, Curate, vol 2 | Page 4

why it should have troubled me. For my
purpose in mentioning the matter, it is enough to say that I had turned
with eagerness to the passage wherein it occurs, as given in two of the
gospels in our version. Judge my delight in discovering that in the one
gospel the whole passage was omitted by the two oldest manuscripts,
and in the other just the one word that had troubled me, by the same
two. I would not have you suppose me foolish enough to imagine that
the oldest manuscript must be the most correct; but you will at once
understand the sense of room and air which the discovery gave me
notwithstanding, and I mention it because it goes both to account for
the dream that followed and to enforce its truth. Pray do not however
imagine me a believer in dreams more than in any other source of
mental impressions. If a dream reveal a principle, that principle is a
revelation, and the dream is neither more NOR LESS valuable than a
waking thought that does the same. The truth conveyed is the revelation.

I do not deny that facts have been learned in dreams, but I would never
call the communication of a mere fact a revelation. Truth alone, beheld
as such by the soul, is worthy of the name. Facts, however, may
themselves be the instruments of such revelation.
"The dream I am now going to tell you was clearly enough led up to by
my waking thoughts. For I had been saying to myself ere I fell asleep:
'On the very Mount Sinai, that once burned with heavenly fire, and
resounded with the thunder of a visible Presence, now old and cold, and
swathed in the mists of legend and doubt, was discovered the most
reverend, because most ancient record of the new dispensation which
dethroned that mountain, and silenced the thunders of the pedagogue
law! Is it not possible that yet, in some ancient convent, insignificant to
the eye of the traveller as modern Nazareth would be but for its ancient
story, some one of the original gospel-manuscripts may lie, truthful and
unblotted from the hand of the very evangelist?--Oh lovely parchment!'
I thought--'if eye of man might but see thee! if lips of man might kiss
thee!' and my heart swelled like the heart of a lover at the thought of
such a boon.--Now, as you know, I live in a sort of live coffin here,"
continued the little man, striking his pigeon-breast, "with a barrel-organ
of discords in it, constantly out of order in one way or another; and
hence it comes that my sleep is so imperfect, and my dreams run more
than is usual, as I believe, on in the direction of my last waking
thoughts. Well, that night, I dreamed thus: I was in a desert. It was
neither day nor night to me. I saw neither sun, moon, nor stars. A heavy,
yet half-luminous cloud hung over the visible earth. My heart was
beating fast and high, for I was journeying towards a certain Armenian
convent, where I had good ground for hoping I should find the original
manuscript of the fourth gospel, the very handwriting of the apostle
John. That the old man did not write it himself, I never thought of that
in my dream.
"After I had walked on for a long, anything but weary time, I saw the
level horizon line before me broken by a rock, as it seemed, rising from
the plain of the desert. I knew it was the monastery. It was many miles
away, and as I journeyed on it grew and grew, until it swelled huge as a
hill against the sky. At length I came up to the door, iron-clamped,
deep-set in a low thick wall. It stood wide open. I entered, crossed a
court, reached the door of the monastery itself, and again entered.

Every door to which I came stood open, but priest nor guide came to
meet me, and I saw no man, and at length looked for none, but used my
best judgment to get deeper and deeper into the building, for I scarce
doubted that in its inmost penetralia I should find the treasure I sought.
At last I stood before a door hung with a curtain of rich workmanship,
torn in the middle from top to bottom. Through the rent I passed into a
stone cell. In the cell stood a table. On the table was a closed book. Oh
how my heart beat! Never but then have I known the feeling of utter
preciousness in a thing possessed. What doubts and fears would not this
one lovely, oh unutterably beloved volume, lay at rest for ever! How
my eyes would dwell upon