OCR Text |
Show Page 230 "transient" of the decade, Horace Greeley, came to Salt Lake in July of 1859 expressly to learn about the true condition of the Mormon people - he went, of course, to hear the famous Orson Pratt. Greeley, the most influential editor in America and later a Democratic candidate for president, was not favorably impressed with Mormon homiletics, as he reported in his book Overland Journey: "Their religious services (in the Tabernacle) are much like those that may be...witnessed in the churches of most of our popular sects; the music rather better... the prayers pertinent and full of unction; the sermons ...rambling, dogmatic, and ill-digested; in fact, Elder Orson Pratt, who preached last Sunday morning, prefaced his harangue by a statement that he had been hard at work on his farm throughout the week, and labored under consequent physical exhaustion...Now, I believe that every preacher should be also a worker; I like to see one mowing or pitching hay in his shirt-sleeves...but when a preacher is to address a congregation of one to three thousand persons...I insist that...he should prepare himself...to speak directly to the point...life is too short to be wasted in listening to rambling, loose-jointed harangues ...I am not edified by this sort of preaching." 48 Greeley may not have enjoyed it, but most Mormons did, which made Orson Pratt one of the most popular preachers in the Church. At home, Orson scratched at the soil with the best of them - the quality Greeley admired - but he was no longer young and depended more on his growing sons for help. When one of them broke his arm, Orson knelt to pray for the boy and felt a forcible inspiration to go look after him - he shook off the impression, but within two hour-s,,the boy had broken his other arm. Orson Junior, now twenty-two, had married and become quite independent of the father he had known so little; although he clearly shared his father's intellectual bent, the younger man was more detached and poetical, given to music and to writing, for its own sake rather than for the purpose of persuasion, and often was heard to lecture others on "the 49 culture of the mind." Educational and technical matters occupied Orson on the councils of |