The Sick Are Healed: Vital Differences

792 IMPROVEMENT ERA

The Christian world, since the Savior's time, has witnessed many men who have gone about doing good in his name, and surely they will receive their reward, for they have been living up to the best light they possessed. Even the Catholic church, which Protestants in general, and the Seventh-day Adventists in particular, denounce as the "whore of all the earth," did an immeasurable amount of good in preserving to us the scriptures and supplementing the work of the apostles by teaching "Christ and him crucified," to the great mass of heathen humanity in the old Roman Empire, who could no more be suddenly converted from their idolatrous notions than the Israelites from the idolatry of the Egyptians, even though the Lord had so wonderfully parted the Red Sea for their deliverance. When in Rome I saw the Pantheon, the great heathen temple in which people from the uttermost confines of the Roman Empire have worshiped at the shrines of their native heathen deities. When the Catholic church gained supreme power and replaced these heathen deities with the statues of Christ and his apostles, and the patron Saints of the Christian era, it implanted ii the hearts of those heathens, a reverence for and belief in th< ir teachings that has made the preaching of the true gospel a comparatively easy task ever since. As proof of this, compare 1.he success of our work among the Christian nations with that among the heathens. We find that truth and error have been blended, so to speak, all down the ages; but the almighty truth has alone been able to withstand the mutations of time. The gospel of Jesus Christ, as restored with power and divine authority to Joseph Smith, embraces all truth to be found in all the churches of the world, and besides it is the source of vast treasures of light and truth of which these churches have little conception. Many of these truths have been preached by the elders of our Church for eighty-eight years and they are gradually revolutionizing modern religious thought and theories, and placing men in a mental attitude in which they are unconsciously absorbing much of the gospel as we understand it. I look for the time to come when the main difference between them and us will be divine authority, and that, mark you, is vital. Church organization, salvation for the dead, and temple ordinances and work, may also be classed as fundamental differences. Brigham City, Utah

The Grizzly of the Idaho Woods* By Claude T. Barnes

Even now as I recall the dreadful experience that befell me during my sojourn in that thickly timbered district which lies immediately west of Yellowstone National Park, I shudder at the thought that only by the merest chance I survive to tell the story. To me nature presents an endless array of interesting detail; and I may as well state in the begining that it was this eagerness for observation that led me into the woods alone and into an indifferent attitude toward all save the beauty of my environs. It was a cloudy afternoon in the latter part of July when I left my friends fishing in the placid waters of the upper Snake river, beside which we had made our camp, and struck off into the dense forests of lodge pole pines. Interspersed among the pines were balsams and other evergreens, and in the dry gulches that sloped imperceptibly towards the river there appeared frequently dense growths of quaking aspen, the latter being usually knarled, twisted or bent by the heavy snow blankets of many winters. One unaccustomed to lodge pole pines can scarcely appreciate their density. In places they appeared in patches a quarter of a mile across, each tree being about the thickness of one's wrist and actually but a few inches from its neighbor. I had great difficulty in penetrating such groves, for aside from the necessity of bending each tree from my path and the inconvenience of walking in a shower of pollen, my range of vision comprised a radius of a dozen yards or more and a delusive portion of the sky above. Soon I discovered that to facilitate my progress I had unconsciously sought bear trails through the timber, the occasional dry excrementa that I chanced upon inciting little comment, as I knew that bears were numerous throughout all that region. Not all of the pines were so thick, and frequently I issued forth upon charming, grassy meadows fringed with monarchs of the woods of various sizes. It was while sitting upon the dried trunk of some ancient conifer that had been prostrated across the green, that I enjoyed to the fullest the aroma, the beauty and the awesome silence of the woods. I seemed to be resting in a bed of flowers. Purple lupines, crimson Indian paint brushes, vari-colored columbines, deep blue fringed gentians, and striking sulphur flowers appeared

*By permission of Outers-Recreation.

794 IMPROVEMENT ERA

as if placed there for my sole delight, while lungworts, violets and balsams gave a delightful redolence to the air. Frequently I stopped to place some plant or blossom in a little book which I carried in my hunting coat; and I noted at such times that the silence of the woods was not complete. Indeed various voices and sounds came through the apparent stillness. Richardson red squirrels scolded at me persistently; several times Rocky mountain flying squirrels noisily sounded their alarm at my presence; and once I heard the loud clear whistles of a pair of yellow woodchucks (M. flaviventer ) Fre-.

quently I listened to the pleasing "chivee, chivee-chivee-ah, chivee" of the Audubon warbler, once discovering a nest in a pine tree beside which the tame songster gave rare opportunity for me to observe with the glasses its newly acquired black breast patches. The strident notes of the Rocky mountain jay, and the sharp call of the red-shafted flicker likewise emphasized the "silence" of the woods. Rubbing pines squeaked with every breeze and even when there was no audible sound my fancy caught that distant, indescribable moan, the rather ominous fairy-whisper or "voice" of the woods. I carried a Springfield rifle, and, the evening being chill, I wore a thick chamois vest of the Guitterman type in addition to a heavy Gem hunting coat. I must have walked several miles before my heavy clothing became comfortable; and it was due to this that I suddenly appreciated that I must be quite a distance from camp, that evening was approaching and that I would better return. Twice before, in different years, I had ventured into these perplexing woods alone, and had become so engrossed with the multitudinous attractions of nature that I had been for a time lost, once not reaching camp until long after darkness had fallen. Though many hunters have lost their way and frozen to death while hunting elk in the very woods of which I speak, this knowledge did not startle me, as in summer there is more inconvenience and annoyance than danger in being com-

pelled to spend the night alone beneath some whispering conifer. I had not seen the sun at all that afternoon, and as my meanderings had taken a desultory course I was annoyed when, upon surveying the monotonous timber and equally confusing sky, to discover that I was not exactly sure which direction to proceed. I carefully observed the lay of the ground and had no little difficulty in determining the direction of water flow of the now grassy little hollow I was in. Satisfying myself, how ever, I proceeded in the hopes that whatever led me towards the river must eventually take me towards camp. I at last came upon a rather bare spot in the midst of which was a very thick patch of young balsams intermingled with