The central Presbyterian. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1856-1908, 1867-11-06
Off for South America--Not Yet.

Perhaps we did feel little like trying
some other land than the blighted Sunny
South, but several things have made us
wiser than we were on this subject.
An intelligent gentleman who has. re-
sided over twenty years in South Ameri-
ca-fve years in Brazil, and more than
three times that period in New Granada,
now in the South on the lookout for a
permanent home, has given us an inside
view of life in South America. He ad-
vises nobody to emigrate; and tells us
If We do, we must bring up our families
in land of low morals, where lcentious-
ness wears the stamp of responsibility,
where everything is insecure and chang
ing, and where revolutions, like chllls
and fever, are almost periodical. Only
four Of these revolutions occurred during
his residence there. Any morning there,
we may find ourselves between the bay
onets of opposing factions, and our pro-
perty either violently taken or enormous
ly taxed, for the war purposes of this
Liberal party, or that. Any morning
there, we may have to shoulder our mus
kets and fight in the ranks of one party
or the other, under some extemporised
Conscript Act-fght for cause, both
sides of which are no concern of ours
fight for it, or else fly the country (if we
can get away,) leaving everything behind.
Under what splendid auspices apparently,
the so-called Confederate Mexican colony
was inaugurated; and yet how soon the
gallant men of the colony had to fly back
to the South, at great loss, utterly disap-
pointed.
There is an instructive and somewhat par
allel passage, in the history of the Jews.
When theirs was "lost use"-lost
like ours, because of sinfulness-the sur
vivors who still remained in Palestine,
experimenting great calamites from the
IRON hands of the Chaldeans, if they still
chung to their native conquered land,
hurried up an emigration to Egypt. On
the one hand, SAID the Israehtes, Jer.
xiii. IA, "We will go into the land of
Egypt, where we shall have no more war,
nor hear the sound of the trumpet, nor
have hunger and there will we dwell. ;"
On the other, said the prophet, Jer. xiii
%, "Know certainly that ye shall die by
the sword, by the famine and by the pes
thence in the place whittier We desire to
90 and sojourn." And they sadly perish
ed there. The true remedy for our
heavy ills is, not to abandon the South,
but to abandon our sins; not to 90 and
abide in Honduras or Brazil, but to 90
and abide in patience at the mercy seat.
We need not newer soil and brighter
sky than belong to our own beautiful
land, but we do need the smiles of God.
He is the wiseSt statesman who most
loudly calls our people to penitence and
prayer. Thus returning unto God, we
may consider another saying of the same
prophet addressed to ourselves. "lf ye
will still abide in this land, then will |
build you up, and not pull you down,
= x be not afraid of the king Of
Babylon * for am with you
to save you and to deliver you from his
hand" To US unrepentant, whetherhere
or in South America, there still remains
a more whitening blight from God. To
the repentant South, there looms up
future more brilliant and more prosper
Gus than the olden times Greensboro
Herald.