ght, of frivolous conversation, of mere rush of ordinary
worldly life, it is far harder to quiet the mind and to concentrate the
thought, than in a place where religious thought has been carried on
year after year, century after century; there the mind becomes calm and
tranquillised insensibly, and that which would have demanded serious
effort in the first place is done without effort in the second.

This is the rationale of places of pilgrimage, of temporary retreats
into seclusion; the man turns inward to seek the God within him, and is
aided by the atmosphere created by thousands of others, who before him
have sought the same in the same place. For in such a place there is not
only the magnetisation produced by a single saint, or by the visit of
some great Being of the invisible world; each person, who visits the
spot with a heart full of reverence and devotion, and is attuned to its
vibrations, reinforces those vibrations with his own life, and leaves
the spot better than it was when he came to it. Magnetic energy slowly
disperses, and a sacred object or place becomes gradually demagnetised
if put aside or deserted. It becomes more magnetised as it is used or
frequented. But the presence of the ignorant scoffer injures such
objects and places, by setting up antagonistic vibrations which weaken
those already existing there. As a wave of sound may be met by another
which extinguishes it, and the result is silence, so do the vibrations
of the scoffing thought weaken or extinguish the vibrations of the
reverent and loving one. The effect produced will, of course, vary with
the relative strengths of the vibrations, but the mischievous one cannot
be without result, for the laws of vibration are the same in the higher
worlds as in the physical, and thought vibrations are the expression of
real energies.

The reason and the effect of the consecration of churches, chapels,
cemeteries, will now be apparent. The act of consecration is not the
mere public setting aside of a place for a particular purpose; it is the
magnetisation of the place for the benefit of all those who frequent it.
For the visible and the invisible worlds are inter-related, interwoven,
each with each, and those can best serve the visible by whom the
energies of the invisible can be wielded.

AFTERWORD.

We have reached the end of a small book on a great subject, and have
only lifted a corner of the Veil that hides the Virgin of Eternal Truth
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