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Show Page 57 took the trustee's part. Soon the whole house was in an uproar, with some calling for a fair hearing and others crying delusion and imposture. The argument continued for two hours and finally came to blows, with Orson standing calmly in the pulpit, "lifting my heart in silent prayer that the Lord would deliver me out of their hands unhurt." Unable to leave, he was threatened by some, his defenders throwing them back; soon a delegation came forward and quietly led Orson out the pulpit doors. The crowd thronged after him, and, finding himself nearly mobbed, he ran into a nearby tavern and escaped out the back way, traveling back to his lodgings in the middle of the night. Orson's Brantford encounter was by no means ended, for the next day he was "sent for" by a large congregation who wished to hear him and had met for the purpose in a large wagon house out of the jurisdiction of Trustee Burwall. Accompanied by three or four brethren, Orson expounded the first principles of Mormonism in freedom, leaving Burwall and three or four others who had heckled him in consternation. When the excitement fell off, Orson preached unmolested in this little town. At Boston, Ontario, he and Nickerson requested permission of a Baptist minister to preach - they were refused and so "washed their feet" against the man, 19 leaving an apostolic judgment in the New Testament tradition. Pratt and Nickerson soon left by steamboat for Toronto, where they found Parley flooded with work. In Parley's words, the people"drank in truth 20 like water," and their harvest of souls included such later luminaries as President John Taylor and Joseph Fielding. In and around Toronto, however, the opposition was fierce, and the missionaries were often beset by Methodist of Baptist preachers "calling for a miracle." The early Mormon emphasis on spiritual gifts had been twisted into extravagant tales of imposture that led many Canadians to despise the very word "Mormon." |
