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Show Page220 and filth of those cursed dens of pollution which have so publicly infested their cities for ages." Polygamy is thus prescribed as the remedy for urban evil; the chapter thus offers an insight into Orson's personal views on sin and social suffering. Decrying the thousands of prostitutes in Britain, he advocates the death penalty for adultery, tossing this severe challenge into the teeth of the Established Church: "Repentance is not to ascend into a finely cushioned pulpit and there whine over the wickedness of the people, without taking any effectual 22 means to suppress that wickedness." In November, Orson brought out the fourth chapter of his doctrinal summa - The Holy Spirit. This tract largely repeated Orson's notion of an immanent intelligence, present in all substance, compound in nature and yet unified in purpose. "The Holy Ghost exists, not only as a person, but as a diffused fluid substance." The personhood of the Holy Ghost does not satisfactorily conform to Orson's ideas about the behavior of matter: "One personage of the Holy Spirit could not be in two or more places at the same instant; for such a condition is absolutely impossible...Therefore, one personage, called the Holy Ghost, could not dwell at the same instant in two or more Saints. If he were in one, He would most certainly be absent from all others..." He goes on to demonstrate that this spirit is divisible, and yet "infinite in quantity," a spiritual fluid "Substance" capable of softening, animating and teaching the heart. This fluid is metaphorically like fire: "When the...disciples were waiting, on the day of Pentecost, for the 'Baptism of the Holy Ghost,'...there appeared unto them cloven tongues, like as of fire...The whole house was filled with the Spirit; hence, these disciples were baptized or immersed in it...On this occasion, portions of this Holy Fluid...transform(ed) its parts into one hundred and twenty tongues, having the appearance of fire." 23 Orson thus saw the Holy Spirit as a living, intelligent, self-moving "fluid," a Nineteenth Century scientific catch-term used to describe any motive nhPnomenon. such as electricity, or the medium "ether" through which |