All the persecutors sleep in peace, and the ashes of those who burned their brothers in the name of Christ rest in consecrated ground. Whole libraries could not contain even the names of the wretches who have filled the world with violence and death in defense of book and creed, and yet they all died the death of the righteous, and no priest or| minister describes the agony and fear, the remorse and horror with which their guilty souls were filled in the last moments of their lives. These men had never doubted; they accepted the creed; they were not infidels; they had not denied the divinity of Christ; they had been baptized; they had partaken of the last supper; they had respected priests; they admitted that the Holy Ghost had "proceeded;" and these things put pillows beneath their dying heads and covered them with the drapery of peace. 175. Crime Rampant and God Silent! There is no recorded instance where the uplifted hand of murder has been paralyzed--no truthful account in all the literature of the world of the innocent shielded by God. Thousands of crimes are being committed every day--men are this moment lying in wait for their human prey; wives are whipped and crushed, driven to insanity and death; little children begging for mercy, lifting imploringly tear-filled eyes to the brutal faces of fathers and mothers; sweet girls are deceived, lured, and outraged; but God has no time to prevent these things--no time to defend the good and to protect the pure. He is too busy numbering hairs and watching sparrows. 176. How Criminals Die Serenely! All kinds of criminals, except infidels, meet death with reasonable serenity. As a rule, there is nothing in the death of a pirate to cast any discredit on his profession. The murderer upon the scaffold, with a priest on either side, smilingly exhorts the multitude to meet him in heaven. The man who has succeeded in making his home a hell meets death without a quiver, provided he has never expressed any doubt as to the divinity of Christ or the eternal "procession" of the holy ghost. The king who has waged cruel and useless war, who has filled countries with widows and fatherless children, with the maimed and diseased, and who has succeeded in offering to the Moloch of ambition the best and bravest of his subjects, dies like a saint. 177. The first Corpse and the first Cathedral