PILGRIM CIRCUIT RIDER

Here's a book for everyone connected with any Christian Church. Take a woman whose sympathies and interests range far beyond the Congregational Christian Church in which she was ordained, train her as a specialist in Christian education, outfit her with a specially built station wagon, and set her to work visiting thousands of churches, and her experiences are bound to have the makings of a fascinating biography. Those makings were not neglected by the Anderson-Dexter team when they wrote the book. It's a first class story in itself. But there is so much more to be said for owning the book. First is the broad picture we get of the Church's many concerns. Miss Anderson went everywhere -- Ozarks, Texas, a trip around the world, then a special mission to Hawaii, and another trip to Japan. She saw the Church at work in every conceivable situation, and took time to add her special skills and enthusiasms to its improvement in all these places. Second, she cannot really stay within her denomination. Hers is a catholic approach that appreciates and understands many traditions, so that what she says is valid for Christians of every stripe. Third, she happens to have spanned in her training and in her experience the great developments of Christian education in recent years, and she writes about these in relation to her work in such an intriguing way, that the reader pays attention to the story while yet learning the basic principles of education which Miss Anderson learned the hard way. Finally, she has a fine sense of the total challenge which the Gospel makes to the world of today. Her social conscience is acute. Her sense of personal devotional needs is obvious. Her appreciation of the Church as a society of redeemed and redeeming people never leaves her. This is a grand book for leaders and pastors to place in the hands of Church School teachers, especially those who would never look at a formal pedagogical text. It might well be used with someone whose social conscience needs awakening. Everyone will profit from an interesting story of a unique person doing an unusual job in the Lord's vineyard, -- and all the more because the story is told well.