Strange is it to note under what varied circumstances 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 RUSH OF DEVOTION]

The Response to Devotion.—­In Fig. 17 we see the result of his thought—­the response of the LOGOS to the appeal made to Him, the truth which underlies the highest and best part of the persistent belief in an answer to prayer.  It needs a few words of explanation.  On every plane of His solar system our LOGOS pours forth His light, His power, His life, and naturally it is on the higher planes that this outpouring of divine strength