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Show Page 235 lectures on "Natural Philosophy" and the arts and sciences, which were planned for the tabernacle and Social Hall, and then asked him directly about his family's financial circumstances - they were, of course, destitute. Though Brigham looked askance at any man who could not acquire and maintain property, he cast about for something remunerative for Orson to do. In February, he hired him personally to teach a free high school at Union Academy in Salt Lake. The public lectures began well - on the laws of motion, hydraulics and philosophy - and Orson was innocently glad of it: "There is quite a spirit prevalent for education rfl in this city," commented the News after one of Orson's night classes. But when the text of Orson's "confession" passed to Brigham's desk to be reviewed for publication, the flames began to smolder again. Brigham brooded upon it - something was not right about it - it was not so much a confession as a concession to the rights of presidency, he decided, and he could not allow it to pass. For Orson's own good and to preserve the doctrinal purity of the Church, Orson himself would have to recant, in detail and in the proper spirit, before the general conference. Informally, he confided to three friends that Orson Pratt's heresy should be explicated in the conference, but that he was afraid of hurting Orson's feelings. Once again the Twelve met in the Historian's Office to work out this volatile problem. Candid, hewn by the frontier, the Twelve were not insensitive men; however, they were suspicious of the conceits they saw in 59 Orson's works. Having recently come out against the reading of novels, they did not take lightly Orson's semantic experiments with the revelations of Joseph Smith. Brigham Young .turned everyone's eyes on Orson in another uncomfortable confrontation: |
