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Show Page 294 Scoffing at the idea that "these are mysteries...the Lord never intended us to understand," he chastises his co-religionists for their passivity in thinking mere compliance with first principles will make them gods - "If there be knowledge...let us seek it...by using our reasoning powers, by reading books, or by human wisdom...let us seek to a higher source - 62 to that Being who is filled with knowledge." All truth he sees as indistinguishably divine. The laws of Newton were "a revelation... concerning the forces of the universe;" the elasticity of the ether, the velocity of light, and the motions of the planets are all equally holy manifestations of the grand progress of the "intelligences" towards perfection. The lord of the fields "shows the light of his countenance" to each of his kingdoms in succession, runs a parable of the "Olive Leaf," to Orson symbolizing an evolutionary process of divinization - as the Creator strives with each of his innumerable creations in turn, "in our hour and in our season," the "veils" are gradually removed: "By and by, when each of these creations has fulfilled the measure and bounds set and the times given...it and its inhabitants who are worthy will be made celestial...Then... there will be no intervening veil between God and his people ...They will be able to see him at all times." 63 For Orson, the "majesty of God" means that "all things are before him"; he knows all because nothing is veiled from his sight, and the same faculty lies dormant and undeveloped in man. Orson sees the gaining of knowledge as the prime sacred imperative, without which man has no purpose. The astronomical keys he had found describe the workings of divinization in both man and matter, for God 64 "quickeneth all things." On September 19, 1880, Orson Pratt stood to speak to a Sunday morning Tabernacle audience, under the direction of his immediate superior in the |