This world remains as most men find it; a tomb, save for those superb spirits who come to bless the wretcheder dwellers in it, with deeds of beautiful self-sacrifice and words of divine love. In the depth of its darker recesses, still the snake-like seducer slimes his victim, and the slanderer spits his venom, and the literature of the Liar still festers like a feverish sore, spreading moral sickness and contamination all around. Thence, and thence only, comes the voice which would fain proclaim to the unhappy that there is no God, and but one gospel--‘Eat and drink, for tomorrow you die.’ But God is, as sure as Love is, or Hope, or heavenly Purity and Light. Therefore let no man despair, though now, as ever, ‘the Light shineth in Darkness, and the Darkness comprehendeth it not.’ THE END End of Project Gutenberg's The Martyrdom of Madeline, by Robert Buchanan