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Show Page 104 Orson's preaching had been transformed. No longer content with simple homilies on first principles, or recountings of the Book of Mormon story, he now tended to discourse rafther than preach to his hearers, exploring with them the mysteries of godliness. The temple itself was clearly and tantalizingly a mystery. And Orson was open to all sorts of esoteric possibilities that might help close the widening cultural fissure between science and religion - he believed that the principles of their unity had not only to be articulated, but also empirLmlly proved. He suspected that the binding force was the temple. In the midst of their solemn mission, the six traveling apostles indulged a little and had their heads examined by a Mr. O.S. Fowler, a leading Boston phrenologist. Phrenology, the practice of describing individual character traits by measuring bumps and hollows on the skull, was a popular pseudo-science of the day. Orson obtained his phrenological chart from Fowler, probably with a good deal of interest, although he 8 has left no comment on the subject. In October Orson returned to Nauvoo with the other apostles to help in the temple construction and to receive endowments. Until the temple was finished, the endowment ceremony was conducted on a limited scale in Joseph Smith's home, and it was there that Orson Pratt participated in this vital ritual for the first time on December 23, 1843, the Prophet's thirty-eighth, and last, birthday. The first endowment ceremonies were probably introduced in May 1842 in an upper room of Joseph's store, but were intended for practice within the great temple he envisioned to cap the prominence of Nauvoo. The ceremony consisted of washings and anointings with oil and bestowal of certain "keys", along with explanatory initiations, which would permit entrance into the celestial kingdom of God. From the first, it was considered an ordinance too sacred |