Years ago, shuttling family around I had some time waiting for them so after the shopping was done and I had some spare time to use up I’d go to my church and began looking at some of the Journals from the 1800s. I was so amazed at what I found; it was a different language (highly spiritual and to the point) than ‘current day’ writing. When my local CS Society closed, through the grace of God I was able to finagle the bound volumes because we were talking about potentially renting a place to keep our group together and I wanted to preserve the precious volumes for posterity, ironically no one else saw value in them. I remember reading “An Allegory” which I had read in “Prose Works” already and finding it altered in wording so then read them side by side. The meaning was the same but I understood the wordings better in one or the other which I found fascinating because I could understand better what Mrs. Eddy was saying.

Frank E. Mason did a number of Bible Studies that are extremely profound and I concluded from the depth of Mrs. Eddy’s “Genesis” and “The Apocalypse” that he had learned from her how to glean the spiritual import out of the Bible. Now attending Plainfield’s Bible Studies and Roundtables one not only learns a lot from each discussion but also the methods of using commentaries, 1828 Webster Dictionary, and all the other resources to understand better (“Key to the Scriptures”) those spiritual gems as we read on our own.

If one doesn’t have a reading room close by (or if they don’t have the bound volumes anymore since they’re ‘just old’) there are some at different times for sale on Ebay. There is so much incredible spiritual information even if one had only one bound volume I’m sure one could mine it for years and still learn fresh things daily!! Also Longyear Museum has “Arkpublication” computer programs which have the important years 1883 to around 1920. If a limited budget but still want to purchase, buy the earliest ones you can find because Mrs. Eddy was the editor for the first couple years and was better able to pay closer personal attention to content when the movement was a bit smaller:)