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Show Page 56 flood of visions and prophecies - although Orson apparently did not experience such spiritual ecstasies himself, he speaks in his journal of those who did. The week-long celebration culminated in another eastern mission call, this time extending into Canada, for Orson Pratt. He left Kirtland on April 6, 1836, accompanied by his brother Parley and an Elder Nickerson. By stagecoach and on foot, the brothers made their way to Niagara Falls, the Lake Erie passage being closed. Niagara made a "deep and awful impression" upon Parley, and he stopped briefly to compose his thoughts in verse, writing a song to the panorama of the falls, resonating with millennial 17 longings for the earth to be "Restored to its original." Orson records 18 simply: "went to the falls." After crossing into Canada, the three elders went separate ways - Parley to Toronto, and Orson and Nickerson to the vicinity of Hamilton, Ontario. Orson's message was characteristic, concentrating on the eschatology of Daniel and Revelation, the coming forth of the Book of Mormon and its Bible evidences from Isaiah and Ezekiel. No longer a simple curiosity, the Mormon message had begun to engender hostility, so that the accustomed "preaching appointment" platform by which Orson and others had gained access to churches and schoolhouses was becoming increasingly risky. At Brantford, Ontario, Orson found himself on the night of April 28 in a crowded schoolhouse, when suddenly a trustee of the school, one Lewis Burwall, arose and demanded unit Orson respond to a few questions before beginning to preach. He answered the usual questions about his identity and affiliation, but when asked whether or not he could speak in tongues, he balked. Rejecting this attempt to draw from him a "sign" of his calling, he refused to be forestalled. Burwall insisted on a simple answer and many in the congregation began to "stamp their feet and hiss at Burwall," while others |