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Show Page 166 At an afternoon tea, Orson had been shown a letter addressed to one of the recent converts, which congratulated the receiver on his accession to religious certainty, and bemoaning his own lack of it. Orson's treatise opens as a reply to the letter, noting that the question of divine authority is so critical that it bears "the savor of life or death." He proceeds to show that the career of Joseph Smith conforms to a prophetic pattern discerned in Daniel, Isaiah, and John's Revelation; that the doctrine of Mormonism is "infallible" because it is so inclusive; its organization matches every feature of the New Testament Church. Not surprisingly there is little appeal to subjective experience as a source of ministerial authority - indeed, he denies "the infallibility of miraculous evidence, ...abstract miracles are as likely to be false as true." Orson prefers to describe the"fruits" of Joseph's labors and evaluate them against a "control," the scripture, almost as if herwere a scientist holding a beaker of chemicals to a flame to assess the reaction. Divine Authority is not to be underestimated as a significant Mormon polemic - it groups together into one system the standard Mormon "proof texts" that point to the millennial mission of such a one as Joseph Smith and bridges dispensations with a certain purity of wonder at the monument of doctrine, Biblical in scope, laid out by the Prophet. Throughout, Orson manifests a genuine contempt for the competition: they are stubble ready for the burning, they in no way reflect the ancient Christian pattern - in fact, they are glowing in opposition to the Testamental value placed on spiritual gifts. He contrasts the priests of Mormonism with the run of sectarian divines: "While the one class are suffering martyrdom for their testimony, the other class are rolling in all the luxuries and splendours of Great Babylon, from ten to twenty to twenty-seven thousand pounds sterling per annum." And with that, he surely hit a resounding note in the ears of the working class Midlanders |