Reflections on The Saviour of the World Volume 7

“In the Charlotte Mason Digital Collection,” I wrote, “there are several pages of handwritten papers from Mason’s early days. These may be journal entries, drafts for books, or other reflections. I find it difficult to read Mason’s handwriting, but … I was wondering if you might have time to take a look at some of these documents to see if you can read enough of each page to get a sense of what each page is about.”

The year was 2017 and I was writing to Linda Fern. Four days later she replied: “In this second document, … it appears to me that she is moving into working on another volume [of The Saviour of the World,] as the one we currently have ends with The Prodigal Son in Luke 15. Here, of course, she picks up on Luke 16 and calls it Book 1, Of Riches.”

“I think you’ve struck gold,” I replied. And indeed she had. For in this stack of barely legible pages, Linda would identify twenty poems that were intended to be published as Charlotte Mason’s seventh poetry volume. To my knowledge no one even knew of their existence, much less of their content.

Linda Fern and Antonella Greco then painstakingly analyzed each handwritten letter to transcribe Mason’s twenty last Gospel poems. And now Antonella has recorded them too. Today we present the poem that “picks up on Luke 16.” Read or listen to “The disciples learn about riches” here.

@artmiddlekauff

🖼️: Parable of the Unjust Steward by A. Mironov