"I presume that we may take the Catholic doctrine on the subject, stated very roughly, to be this—that while the hopelessly wicked man drops into hell, and the great saint is caught up immediately into heaven, as was the Blessed Virgin at her Assumption, the ordinarily good man still retains many faults and imperfections which unfit him to pass directly into the presence of God, and consequently needs a shorter or longer stay in an intermediate condition called purgatory, during which his various failings are eliminated by a comparatively short though painful process. It is only after being thus made perfect through suffering that he is ready to pass on into the joy of the heaven world. It will at once be seen by Theosophical students that this theory, in the form in which I have here stated it, corresponds very closely with the facts of the case."