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Show Page 293 His homilies revealed that he still held to the fundamental philosophical principles he had advanced in The Seer and the British Mission pamphlets. He was pleased with the reception, among the astute of Salt Lake, of his Key to the Universe, so much so that he brought out a second edition - and in his discourses he tied astronomical law to his notion that all substance was intelligent: "The earth seems to take one continued course. It has an orbit. It does not deviate from this orbit...Some, in reflecting on this, might say that the earth is obliged to follow this course. I do not know about this. I am not so sure. I think if we could see a little further, we would understand that, connected with the materials of the earth is a living principle...that acts according to certain laws, intelligently, not blindly...It is not a law of blind materials which have no knowledge or life connected with them ...'the earth abideth the law of a celestial kingdom, for it filleth the measure of its areation."1 60 Citing the "Olive Leaf" revelation, which deals with the patterns of celestial law and government, Orson finds that the principle which sustains the universe is "intelligence." Everything is alive, and intelligent. And though he does not speak with the unequivocal certitude of the 1850s pamphlets, he stills draws from the revelations the challenge that godliness and glorification depend upon the getting of wisdom. Orson begins his greatest sermon, "The Majesty of God," by reading a large portion of the "Olive Leaf" to an intimate congregation in the Sixteenth Ward Assembly Rooms. To him, these words of Joseph Smith contain knowledge "far beyond that which you will find recorded in the writings of the learned," for they clearly exhibited the nature of "that Being whom we worship." He points to the emphasis on celestial bodies, that God is "in" them as they move shining through space, and that we reverence him precisely because he governs the heavenly luminaries: "We are also told that we are his sons and his daughters, that we were begotten by him, before the foundation of this world; that we are his offspring...but can we form an idea of the intelligence that he possesses?" 61 |