CLOSE YOUR EYES WHEN PRAYING

More of the matronly, checked-apron religious commentary of the late Mrs. Hudson, Credos and Quips, (1964) deal with credos; Flapdoodle, Trust and Obey, (1966) with commonsense Christianity. This time the Bible takes its non-scholarly folksy comeuppance in a series of lallygagging talks before a ladies' Sunday School group in a mid-Western Episcopal Chruch. Ladies of the Bible is the general course outline -- Eve, who was given bodily to a man she'd never seen, who was supported not one little bit by tattletale Adam; Naomi, the tenderly concerned mother-in-law; Mary, ""this majestic woman."" Throughout Mrs. Hudson brings the distant Bible personalities into the fabric of everyday domestic doings, heartbreak and triumphs, and illuminates her homilies with a buoyant, vigorous faith in a traditional sectarian framework. Perhaps too folksy and hearty for some, these are earmarked for the following -- and one wonders why the witty, bug-eyed illustrations by Susan Peri were employed for such relentlessly wholesome material. Predictable readership.