The Extra Mile – A 21st century pilgrimage Peter Stanford Continuum, 2010
ISBN 978 0 82643 4043, £16.99
Peter Stanford acknowledges that he is not a ‘non-religious seeker’ – neither am I. In the prayer book of the ecumenical, dispersed Northumbria Community (I’m a Companion member) are the words: ‘there are some common tasks that we all engage in: looking for signposts to tell us where we are; trying to make sense of what we have already experienced along the way; and seeking to know what lies ahead and at journeys end. Life, in short, is a pilgrimage’.
Would this author’s experiences at various UK religious sites (Christian and others) encourage me on my pilgrimage in times when institutional religion is waning whilst a spiritual hunger among all ages is increasing? My brow furrowed at the words, ‘the logic of most faiths is that, in everyday life, the sacred is always just beyond our reach’. As someone imbued with Celtic Christianity, I would rather affirm the sacred within everyday things! My concern eased as he relates his experiences and meetings at Stonehenge, Bardsey Island, the Derbyshire Wells, Walsingham, Holywell, Iona, Lindisfarne and Glastonbury; among people carrying their hopes and fears, joys and sorrows.
Pilgrimage might be something that we do, maybe with mixed motives, but the very act of pilgrimage does something to us. Be encouraged to read this book. The author’s own experience is caught in the words (quoted from RS Thomas), ‘I think that maybe I will be a little surer of being a little nearer. That’s all. Eternity is in the understanding that that little is more than enough.’
John Davis, Agricultural Chaplain, Selby, North Yorkshire C.H. Spurgeon – The People’s Preacher Peter Morden, CWR, 2009, ISBN 978-1-85345-497-4 £9.99
Charles Haddon Spurgeon was known as the boy preacher of the Fens, the People’s Preacher and, at his funeral, the Prince of Preachers. Spurgeon was without doubt the most outstanding preacher of the nineteenth century, but there is much more for which he should be remembered.
Born in Kelvedon in 1834, converted at fifteen in a Primitive Methodist Chapel in Colchester, baptised shortly afterwards at Isleham Ferry, Spurgeon was soon teaching in the Sunday School of the church he had joined at Newmarket and preaching in the local chapels. A year after his conversion he was called to pastor the chapel at Waterbeach where, within two years, the regular congregation grew from 40 to 400, a sign of what was to come in his outstanding London ministry.
Morden covers those London years in a way that enables us to visualise what it was like to join the huge crowds that gathered every Sunday to hear Spurgeon preach. He also takes us into other areas of Spurgeon’s ministry: his pastoral care, his initiation of relief for the poor, the Pastors’ College and the Stockwell Orphanage.
In this well-written and easy to read book the author helps us understand Spurgeon the man, what drove him and the wife (Susannah) who unreservedly supported him. He enables us to feel what it was like to be one of his theological students and what life was like for the children at his orphanage. This book will be an inspiration for everyone seeking to serve God through the life of their church, whatever its denomination.
A proportion of the royalties from the sales of the book will be donated to Spurgeons for children and young people.
Graham Wise, Brecon
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www.countyway.org.uk
book reviews
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