Let us now pause on what we mean by the Catholic spirit. By that I mean the spirit which is reverent of tradition, which is willing to submit to reasonable and recognised authority, which is willing to take a great plan and co-operate in it, and realise that the presence of the architect of the plan, if He be a person highly developed, say a Master, is enough to give it authority, and that there is no lack of freedom or dignity in accepting the plan of a greater, and working it out to the utmost of one’s ability. It is the spirit which, largely emotional, when it rises into love of the higher and becomes devotion, causes sympathetic vibrations on the buddhic plane, and so begins the awakening of the Spirit above the intellect. Again, with this Catholic spirit you always find the love of beauty. It is artistic. It seeks to clothe thought in forms of beauty. It loves ceremonial, takes a pleasure in harmonised expression of thought, and desires that everything round it should be emotionally satisfactory as well as intellectually sound. Moreover, its mind is eminently teachable, where the Puritan is not. Hence it is far easier to lead it along the path of what is called Occultism. The Catholic mind very readily recognises that those above itself in development may be able by guidance and teaching to help it to reach knowledge which, unaided, it would be unable to achieve. The Puritan would walk alone; the Catholic would utilise every assistance that can be given in evolution, including the assistance of human beings more highly developed, as well as of spiritual intelligences. And so you have round it an atmosphere which readily responds to impulses from the spiritual worlds, and always with this spirit you find the tendency toward Occultism of various kinds. I do not think you ever find that tendency in connexion with the Puritan spirit. You may find with the Puritan spirit sometimes a lofty form of mysticism, a recognition of a Spirit as the Life of the universe, and an attempt to realise that Spirit within oneself. That you may reach largely by way of the intellect, and emotion is not necessarily concerned in it. Intellectually you may realise unity, and then pass into the mystical ideal of the One in the Many, to be recognised in each. And you do find occasionally in the great Puritans of the past a very noble, though somewhat stern and cold, form of mystical belief; whereas the moment you come to Catholic mysticism, you find yourself in an atmosphere charged with emotion. The Catholic Mystic is swept up in a great surge of emotion to the Object of his love; the Puritan Mystic calmly, almost coldly, recognises the greatness of the Object of his worship, intellectually tries to realise, and by that to some extent unifies himself with It. You have an example of the Puritan Mystic in Cromwell. Read his letters, read the letters of the man, wrung out of his heart by the strain of doubt and despair, and clinging, in