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PROTECTION FOR THE TAHOE FOREST.

But now a change has come in the history of these people, and they can thank the United States Department of Forestry to a large extent for future preservation of their domains from destruction by fire.

First, the improvement has been along lines of better means of locating forest fires. In June, 1911, the Department of Forestry erected a watchtower on the top of Banner Mountain, four miles southeast of Nevada City. The mountain itself has an elevation of thirty-nine hundred feet, and on top of this stands the tower, forty-seven feet high. From its top one can scan parts of ten counties. About one-third of the Tahoe Reserve can be seen with the naked eye. In fact, a radius of fifty miles can be viewed from the top of this look-out station.

In the fire season of the year past, a forest guard kept vigil on the tower, and his keen eye detected many a smoky spot and tiny blaze starting here and there over the Tahoe National Forest and surrounding country. He at once reported these observations to the head office in Nevada City.

By use of an ordinary rule, bearings were taken at once on a large map in the office, a map of the country made of mounted topographical sheets of the U. S. Geographical Survey, around which was inscribed a compass dial. The map being properly orientated, the office force when informed of a fire only had to place the rule on the map and sight along its edge to determine the direction and location of the fire. Mr. Howe, the forest guard, detected sixty-three fires in the last season on the National Forest, and nearly many outside the Forest Reserve. As far as is known, this was the first lookout tower of the kind to be constructed in the State of California, though several stand in other parts of the country. In 1910 there were seventy-seven fires in the Tahoe National Forest, destroying timber valued at $89,000. Sixteen thousand five hundred acres of forest was burnt over, and the cost for extinguishing these fires was over

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$7,000. In 1911, forty-five fires were sighted on the National Reserve. Four thousand two hundred and fifteen acres of government land and adjoining territory was burned over. Thus, since the erection of the look-out tower, we have a decrease of nearly forty-two per cent in the number of fires, and a decrease of seventy-five per cent in the area burnt over. This wonderful improvement is due to a great extent to the erection of this simple look-out tower, which already has many times paid for its construction.

Another great aid to better forest protection in that country is the adequate miles and miles of telephone line which has been erected in the last year. It has helped the foresters wonderfully in reducing the area burnt over. On a few minutes' notice now, every station and every district ranger can be gotten by the head office.

The careful vigilance of the guards and rangers who, being located thickly over the Tahoe National Forest, following on the tracks of careless hunters and campers, have been great benefactors in protective work of the timber of our land. Their sole duty is to patrol the region assigned to them. The guards ride out every day while the district ranger remains near a telephone to report to headquarters any fire discovered by his look-out

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laws. Any number of these booklets can be had by applying to the State Forester, Sacramento, California.

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Too much cannot be said for the recent strict forestry laws which now being enforced, laws warning the thoughtless hunter and camper who travel the forest in the dry season of the year. These laws are not meant for the careful man, but for the individual like the foreigner who sometimes confuses liberty with license.

In recent years greater precaution is being taken by the farmers adjoining the Tahoe National Forest, and when riding through Southern Nevada County in June, July, August or September, one may read on every gatepost, "No Hunting Allowed."

Undoubtedly a great advance has been made by the Forestry Department in and about the Tahoe National Forest, and already the people of that country are realizing results from their recent enlightenment.

In the first place, there is a wonderful decrease in fires; secondly, they

are discovered more quickly than of old; if they get a start they are conquered sooner, and people every day are becoming more interested in general forest protection and are learning better how to protect themselves.

In years not far off, the mine owner will be benefited by an abundance of timber which may be judiciously cut from the forest without injury to it.

The Forestry Department is protecting the grazer, though sometimes the latter does not realize it. In the decrease in forest fires, comes more feed for the sheep and cattle, and by limitations being placed on the number of stock grazed on a given area, . ranges cannot become over-stocked.

It is needless to speak of the benefits to be derived by the farmers in and around the Tahoe National Forest. Good feed for the cattle, plenty of wood if cautiously cut, and a complete absence of terror of fire, which, in times gone by echoed through the hills, valleys and mountains from the beginning to the end of summer.

THE STORM

Is this the end? Look! How the dark clouds dip!
How low the heavens hang, and how the fray
Of lightning lances gleam and glance and play!
The earth-born furies hold with mighty grip
The vale and hill, the crag and mountain tip:—
Something like this must mark the closing day.
Frail wind-blown Humans, it were well to pray
With fervid zeal upon each fevered lip.

Oh, that the blinding storm were all without,
And that, thus kneeling, in some lonely cave,
I need not care for gales that wail and rout!
But, hidden in my soul, worse furies rave-
Dead hopes come back to stifle me with doubt,
And this is all, this lonely darkened grave.

CHARLES H. CHESLEY.

Thrust in Thy Sickle

By C. T. Russell

Pastor of Brooklyn and London Tabernacles.

"The World that Was"-"The Present Evil World"-"The World to Come."

Text-"Thrust in thy sickle, and reap; for the time is come for thee to reap."-Rev. 14:15.

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NTELLIGENT people appear to reason upon every subject under the sun except on religion. Approach a man upon any matter of industry or social progress, or political economy or finance, and we find him reasonably alert to the general law of Cause and Effect, but when it comes to religion the same man refuses to recognize or follow such laws. To illustrate: If a thousand religious men and women were asked to give some general outline of the Divine Plan under which humanity is being dealt with by the Almighty, nine hundred and ninety-nine of them would look at you in blank astonishment though it were absurd to suppose that God would conduct his affairs along the lines of order, reason and common sense-Cause and Effect. On the contrary, the Scriptures everywhere hold that our Creator is systematically ordering the affairs of earth and "working all things according to the counsel of his own will" (Ephesians, i, 11.)

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St. Peter divides the world's history into three great epochs, which our common version Bible designates as "worlds." The first of these, he says, lasted from the creation of our first parents to the flood. The flood was the harvest time, the reaping time, of that epoch. It was the conclusion to the course of sin which, he tells us, there prevailed. And only eight persons, Noah and his family, were carried over as a nucleus for another great epoch, or "world," which St. Peter calls, "The world that now is," and which St. Paul calls, "This present evil world" or epoch, and of which Jesus states, "My kingdom is

not of this world (epoch)," while again He informs us that Satan is "the Prince of this world."

Certain things have been in progress certain great instructions and blessings from the Almighty during this long period of over forty-three hundred years. "This present evil world" or epoch is to have a harvest time, and its affairs are to be as thoroughly wound up, completed, as were the affairs of "the world before the flood." Then a new epoch or "world to come" will dawn, the character of which is clearly delineated in the Scriptures as being very contrary in every way to that of "this present evil world." It will be "The world to come, whereof we speak," the new epoch, figuratively said to have "a new heavens and a new earth," in which the Lord will dominate human affairs. His elect Church of the present time associated with Him as His Bride, will constitute the "new heavens" or new spiritual domination under which human regeneration will bring the "new earth." Under that new dispensation everything will be in accord with the character of its King, the Prince of Light and Righteousness, just as the conditions of "the present evil world" are in harmony with the characteristics of the "Prince of this world, who now worketh in the hearts of the children of disobedience"-"the Prince of Dark

ness."

"The World That Was."

The "world" or epoch which ended at the flood accomplished a great work. It was during that period of sixteen hundred and fifty-six years that God first tested Satan by permitting him to have an opportunity to show the traitorous attitude of his heart in connection with our first

parents. Desiring to establish himself as an Emperor over earth, separate and distinct from the Empire of Jehovah, Lucifer became Satan, God's Adversary, and has since continued in his opposition to the Divine will. Our first parents, through Satan's lie, were led into disobedience to God, which resulted in the death sentence on Adam and his race. Subsequently for centuries the holy angels were allowed to have intercourse with fallen men, with a view to helping them back into harmony with God, not that God expected any such results, for he already knew that there could be no recovery of humanity, except through the merit of the Redeemer, whose sacrifice would purchase the world and whose reign as the King of kings and Lord of lords would ultimately restore the willing and obedient of the race. But the angels to all eternity might have supposed that an easier way of saving men was possible; that if permitted they could educate, assist and uplift mankind out of sin and death conditions back to harmony with God. God not only desired to show that all such results were impossible, but also He desired to use the opportunity to test, to prove, the loyalty, the faithfulness of the angelic hosts.

Amongst the liberties granted to all the angels at that time was the power to materialize-to assume human forms. We need not stop to discuss the possibility of this, for we are addressing those who believe the Scriptural record, and to such it will be quite sufficient for us to cite one of the many Scriptural instances; the case of the three men who appeared to Abraham and were subsequently found to be angels-spirit beings. They looked, talked, ate and were clothed like men. Abraham knew not who they were until subsequently they revealed their identity, as we read in the account of Genesis xviii. The Apostle Paul adds his testimony to this incident, saying to the Church, "Be not forgetful to entertain strangers; for thereby some have entertained angels unawares" (Hebrews xiii, 2.)

For long centuries this relationship between the angels and mankind continued. We have no record of any human being receiving an uplift from their ministrations. On the contrary, as God had foreseen, the influence of sin was contagious and ere long some of the angelic hosts became so enamored of the daughters of men that "they took to themselves wives of such as they chose," and preferred to leave their own habitation or spirit condition and to remain in a materialized form and to raise earthly families, although their course was contrary to the Divine arrangement and must have been so understood by them. Divine power was not interposed to hinder them. The error of this sedition, the leaving of their own habitation or plane of spirit being, from a small beginning, spread, and God's non-interference God's non-interference justified the supposition that he was either not able to cope with the situation, or unable to enforce His own Law. Thus centuries rolled by, while the earthly children. of "those angels which kept not their first estate" became "giants and men of renown" at a time when maturity was not reached for at least one hundred years (Genesis vi.)

During all those centuries we may be sure that every one of the holy angels had fullest opportunity to participate in the seductive pleasures of sin. And we may be quite sure during that epoch or age God demonstrated fully, completely, which of the angels were in heart and deed, in spirit and in truth, loyal to him and to all the principles of his righteousness. This work having been accomplished, that "world before the flood" was brought to an end, was overwhelmed by a flood of waters, the Lord declaring that the whole earth had become corrupt through this evil. The influence of the angels along licentious lines seemingly tended more and more to degrade humanity, so that we read that God beheld that "every imagination of man's heart was evil, and only evil, and that continually."

THRUST IN THY SICKLE.

"This Present Evil World."

"This present evil world" differs from "the world before the flood" in that it is not under the ministration of the angels-but man, in a general sense, is left to himself. Since the flood, the world in general has been going on just as if there were no God, the exceptions, aside from the Jewish nation and the Church of Christ, being the destruction of the Sodomites and the preaching of Jonah to the Ninevites, warning them that they were about to perish. In other words, so far as outward appearance goes, God has allowed the world to take its own course, interfering only when the corruption became so great as to make life injurious rather than a favor.

St. Paul, reviewing the question of human degradation as exhibited in heathendom, etc., explains that the great deterioration in the human family is the result of man's being left to himself as respects the Divine supervision. He says, looking back along the line of Noah's descendants, "When they knew God they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful.

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind"-they giving themselves over to things that not profitable, defiling themselves, etc. (Romans i, 21-27.)

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This condition of things continued from Noah's day until three and onehalf years after our Lord's crucifixion, when the special favor of God toward the nation of Israel terminated and the "middle wall of partition was broken down"-Cornelius being the first Gentile admitted to the privileges of the Gospel.

During the long period from Noah to Christ-twenty-five hundred yearsGod, as we have seen, had no dealing with the world, but he did have very special dealings with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and then subsequently with the nation of Israel. To those patriarchs He gave an Oath-Bound Covenant, that through their posterity He would ultimately bless all the families

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of the earth. Moreover, the character of the promise was such that it implied not only the resurrection also of all the families of the earth that have gone down into death under the great Adamic sentence (Romans v, 12,

17, 19.)

The nation of Israel was segregated from all the other nations of the world and bound to the Lord and He to them by the Covenant of the Law entered into at Mt. Sinai. Under the terms of that Covenant it was implied that that whole nation should constitute the seed of Abraham and rule and bless all other nations, but the conditions were the keeping of the Law perfectly. God, of course, knew that, as imperfect men, Israel had undertaken an impossible contract. But he also knew that under his supervision the contract would not eventually be to their disadvantage, but the reverse. He used that nation as a typical people, their jubilees representing the "times of restitution" (Acts iii, 20.) coming to the world under the Millennial reign of Christ. Their day Sabbath typified a coming blessing to Spiritual Israel. Their year Sabbath typified a coming blessing to the world, to the universe. Their Day of Atonement for sins typified the day of better sacrifices, of Christ and the Church. Indeed, we may understand that fleshly Israel and all of its great affairs were typical foreshadowings of God's greater blessings to come in after dispensations.

Jewish Favor Culminated.

The culmination of the Lord's dealings with Israel was reached, as He had intended from the beginning, when our Lord Jesus left the glory of the Father on the heavenly plane and was made flesh, being born under the Law Covenant. Not being a direct member of the human family, but "holy, harmless and separate from sinners," he was perfect and fully able to keep all the terms of that Law Covenant, and did so. Thus, under the provisions of the Law Covenant. he, and he alone of all the Jewish na

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