stances this vague blue
cloud may be seen; and oftentimes its absence speaks more loudly than
its presence. For in many a fashionable place of worship we seek it in
vain, and find instead of it a vast conglomeration of thought-forms of
that second type which take the shape of material objects. Instead of
tokens of devotion, we see floating above the "worshippers" the astral
images of hats and bonnets, of jewellery and gorgeous dresses, of horses
and of carriages, of whisky-bottles and of Sunday dinners, and sometimes
of whole rows of intricate calculations, showing that men and women
alike have had during their supposed hours of prayer and praise no
thoughts but of business or of pleasure, of the desires or the anxieties
of the lower form of mundane existence.

Yet sometimes in a humbler fane, in a church belonging to the
unfashionable Catholic or Ritualist, or even in a lowly meeting-house
where there is but little of learning or of culture, one may watch the
deep blue clouds rolling ceaselessly eastward towards the altar, or
upwards, testifying at least to the earnestness and the reverence of
those who give them birth. Rarely--very rarely--among the clouds of blue
will flash like a lance cast by the hand of a giant such a thought-form
as is shown in Fig. 15; or such a flower of self-renunciation as we see
in Fig. 16 may float before our ravished eyes; but in most cases we must
seek elsewhere for these signs of a higher development.

_Upward Rush of Devotion._--The form in Fig. 15 bears much the same
relation to that of Fig. 14 as did the clearly outlined projectile of
Fig. 10 to the indeterminate cloud of Fig. 8. We could hardly have a
more marked contrast than that between the inchoate flaccidity of the
nebulosity in Fig. 14 and the virile vigour of the splendid spire of
highly developed devotion which leaps into being before us in Fig. 15.
This is no uncertain half-formed sentiment; it is the outrush into
manifestation of a grand emotion rooted deep in the knowledge of fact.
The man who feels such devotion as this is one who knows in whom he has
believed; the man who makes such a thought-form as this is one who has
taught himself how to think. The determination of the upward rush points
to courage as well as conviction, while the sharpness of its outline
shows the clarity of its creator's conception, and the peerless purity
of its colour bears witness to his utter unselfishness.

[Illustration: FIG. 15. UPWARD RUS