To answer Jerome's question:

            Sometime before 1885, Brookman found comfortable association with Age-to-Come believers and Millinnarians. He sent a letter of greetings and well-wishes to a meeting of the Association for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge held in late September 1885. Their name was derived from an older, well-known British tract society, and it appears that it was meant to ride on the coattails of the better-known society. (The Watch Tower Society also borrowed the name for use on the ‘mailing tracts’ in 1919.)

            The Association was an Age-to-Come publishing house connected to The Restitution which printed a report of their meeting. G. Y. Young was president and H. V. Reed, The Restitution’s editor, was vice president. We’ve met them earlier in this history. And there were others met earlier in this work interested in the Association. H. L. Hastings, J. P. Weethee, S. A. Chaplin, L. C. Thomas, and Benjamin Wilson all appear in the report. And most interestingly, B. Ackley sent them a letter of greeting.[1]

            Brookman wrote for the Association’s magazine, The Rock: A Quarterly Magazine, containing “original essays, sermons, reviews, and sketches, on the subjects of Conditional Immortality and the Coming and Kingdom of Christ.” Subscription payments (twenty cents per year) were made through The Restitution. The Rock was short-lived, but Brookman maintained his connection to the Association at least to 1888, addressing their annual meeting on the subject, “The Woman’s Seed and the Resurrection.”[2] He addressed a national convention sponsored by The Restitution the same month. S. A. Chaplin, Restitution’s editor at the time, described his speech as “a very able sermon.”[3]

            In September 1889, he and P. G. Bowman, both associating with Russell in this period, addressed a conference sponsored by The Restitution. Brookman’s theme was “The Proper Course of Study for a Young Man to fit him for the Ministry.” Bowman spoke similarly but on the topic “The Thing Most Needed to Make a person a Successful Minister of the Gospel.”[4]

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[1]               The Association for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge – Report of the Second Annual Meeting at Brooklyn, N. Y., The Restitution, October 14, 1885.

[2]               Report of the Annual Meeting of the Association for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, The Restitution, November 7, 1888.

[3]               S. A. Chaplin: Editorial Notes, The Restitution, November 31, 1888.

[4]               Programme of Exercises for the Indiana Annual Conference, to be held at Rensselaer, Indiana, Commencing on Thrusday Evening, Sept. 5, 1889, The Restitution, September 4, 1889.