Only then--it is not His work--it cannot and can never be.
And now, kind reader, you may think that the writer is either a lunatic or a madman to advance a doctrine which claims that God--the Infinite--the Everlasting--the Omnipotent--the Inscrutable, would turn awhile from the good and survey them not--allow them to suffer.

We are neither the one nor the other.

Perchance our doctrine is a mere vagary; still, as we glance over our country and see the scenes daily enacted, we cannot believe they are the work of an Almighty Father.
When our maidens are ravished by the hated foe and despoiled of that Virtue held sacred in Heaven, is it the work of God?
When the creeping babe is immolated by the savages of the North, is it a dispensation of Providence?
When the homesteads of the people are given to the flames and the cursed army of Abolitionists exult at their demolition, does the hand of our Heavenly Father direct the work of destruction?
When our temples are profaned by the bacchanalian orgies of the Northern hordes, does the Infinite invite them to desecrate His altars?
They are not His works--they never were.

These acts which the Christian world shudders at, are the machinations and promptings of Hell, and the Fiends who dwell therein triumph for awhile where the Eye of God is not.
But the Eye of God is not always turned away from His suffering people.

The cry of the wretched is borne to His ear by the angels, and Mercy, Charity and Goodness descend to Earth and sweep away the incarnate spirits infesting it.