THE OFFICIAL F W BOREHAM BLOG SITE

Boreham Books Available

noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Pound) — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 19:01:00 +0000

Dan Rudge has alerted me to the sale of some second-hand Boreham books on Ebay.

Link:
This is a link to the books he is selling: http://shop.ebay.co.uk/merchant/djrudge

List:
FW Boreham - A Bunch of Everlastings HBDW
FW Boreham - Arrows of Desire HBDW FIRST EDITION 1951
FW Boreham - Cliffs of Opal 1948 FIRST EDITION HBDW
FW Boreham - The Beatitudes 1935 FIRST EDITION
FW Boreham - The Blue Flame HB 1930 FIRST EDITION
FW Boreham - Wisps of Wildfire HB 1924 FIRST EDITION

Good trading!

Dr Geoff Pound

Image: The Blue Flame.

Further Boreham Book in Pipeline

noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Pound) — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 02:53:00 +0000

Reference was made recently to the new book that was due to be printed last Friday. It is entitled, The Chalice of Life and it is described in the posting at this link.

A larger manuscript is being finalized with the title, A Packet of Surprises: The Best Essays and Sermons of F W Boreham.

Publishing progress is being regularly reported at Mike Dalton’s F W Boreham Publishing News site with news (here is the latest at the time of writing) on how you might be able to order a first edition. Mike does so much of the unseen detail in getting the text looking superb and the challenges of negotiating with the printers

To get you excited, I have posted the beautifully symbolic cover on this page, created again by our wonderful designer, Laura Zugzda.

I thought you also might like a preview so I am posting here the preface to the Packet of Surprises:

Preface

Selecting the Best
Choosing the best essays of F W Boreham is as excruciating as selecting some children to get the honors and telling the others that they did not make the grade. As mentioned in the preface to The Best Stories of F W Boreham the selection is subjective. But there is some rhyme and reason to the choices. Some were voted in by current Boreham readers so they appear by popular demand. Others are clearly Boreham’s choice or were popular in his day. His biographer, T Howard Crago, reported that ‘The Other Side of the Hill’ (a variation of which was entitled ‘The Sunny Side of the Ranges’, was an address delivered 80 times and ‘The House that Jack Built’ was given 140 times to churches that requested Dr Boreham to give this lecture to their community as a fund raiser.[1]

In compiling this selection an effort has been made to include essays on a range of themes, those which illustrate different homiletical methods and others that are drawn from different periods in Boreham’s career. The sermons, ‘Mind Your Own Business’, ‘He Made as Though’ and ‘A Prophet’s Pilgrimage’ represent extensive reflections on Biblical stories. The chapters entitled, ‘Dominoes’, ‘Please Shut the Gate!’ and ‘I.O.U.’ are fine examples of the way F W Boreham told parables by taking ordinary, everyday objects or expressions and skillfully helped his hearers to discover a deeper truth. The messages on the favorite texts of Catherine Booth, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Abraham Lincoln are representative of the 100+ addresses in the most popular Boreham sermon series that are contained in the five books on the theme, ‘Texts that Made History’. ‘The Squirrel’s Dream’ and ‘Waiting for the Tide’ offer glimpses into the way F W Boreham used paintings to illustrate his themes.

The sermon ‘The Whisper of God’ may at face value have not made the cut in Boreham’s best but it is included because it is the best of his earliest sermons and it illustrates how his preaching changed in style, structure and length. His contemporary, J J North, judged Boreham’s early literary ventures to be “long-worded” because “the terse Boreham had not arrived.”[2] Amid the many admiring reviews, it was said of Boreham’s first volume of sermons, The Whisper of God, that “if illustrations and incidents did not jostle so thickly on the pages and the poetical quotations were remorselessly reduced the sermons would gain much in value.”[3] The Best Essays of F W Boreham demonstrates the way that Boreham worked hard to remodel his writing and preaching through such things as the removal of wordy clutter for it is clear to see the emergence of a simple and flowing style.

Genre
Already the terms ‘essay’, ‘sermon’, ‘lecture’ and ‘address’ have been used in this introduction. Some of the chapters in his books are clearly one genre or another but F W Boreham was, as Lindsay Newnham described, the great ‘recycler’ who suited his style to his audience and tweaked his material to fit the allotted time or word limits.[4]

In a review of the book A Bunch of Everlastings, Dr. James Hastings, editor of the famous Dictionary of the Bible, asked a question that many readers have asked: “Is Mr. Boreham able to preach such sermons as these, exactly as they are printed here? Their interest is undoubted and intense. For Mr. Boreham is an artist. Every sermon is constructed. Every thought is in its place, and appropriately expressed. And there are no marks left in the constructing. To the literary student, as to the average reader of sermons, every sermon is literature.” Howard Crago, (whose text was read by F W Boreham) answered, ‘The fact was, of course, that each of these sermons was preached from memory in almost the exact words in which it was printed.’”[5]

Truth through Personality
If the content of these sermons and lectures were word for word the same as what we read in this volume they do not convey fully the total impact of the preaching event—the pausing, the modulation of his voice, the twinkle in the eye and the response of his hearers. Fortunately Howard Crago has recorded this colourful insight into how one of F W Boreham’s addresses was received:

“As time went on and ‘The House That Jack Built’ grew in popularity, the lecturer developed it and perfected its delivery until the whole thing flowed on for more than an hour of fascinating elocution and magnificent eloquence. He himself revelled in reciting it, and the audience enjoyed it to the full while being unconsciously influenced by its gentle suggestiveness.”

“A typical audience-reaction was that of the Rev. C. Bernard Cockett, M.A., who, after hearing the lecture in a Surrey Hills church said, ‘It is not to be wondered at that individuals who appreciate the words of an author are interested in him as a man, lecturer and minister. Therefore, when the Rev. F. W. Boreham's presence was heralded in a Melbourne suburb many people asked, `What is he like?' `Can he speak and preach as well as write?' `Has he personality and originality in the pulpit as well as in the study?' Boreham came-spoke-and conquered! He spoke for an hour; but the minutes passed by on shimmering wings. He speaks quite as well as he writes—the voice is strong and sweet; ringing, yet winning, and the word lives in the message. ‘The House That Jack Built’ was a brilliant drama, staged and performed by the author. And his control of the audience! A happy and original introduction; apposite stories from history, science, and romance, related with telling effect; soft touches on the varying notes of the human soul, making it tremble with childlike laughter, and then a sudden chord of richer music with concentrated and arresting power—while the listener perceives God through smiles.’”

“Moving a vote of thanks at Wangaratta [Victoria], a local farmer expressed a good deal when he said, ‘I enjoyed the lecture because I could see that Mr. Boreham was enjoying it so much himself.’”[6]

Inflaming Passion
These essays and sermons have been brought together not for literary inspection and homiletical interest but so they might speak powerfully to readers in this contemporary age. F W Boreham believed in the importance of heroes, he devoted an entire chapter of his autobiography to two of his preaching models [7] and he encouraged preachers to study evangelistic models to “inflame your devotion.”[8]

But Boreham sounded a warning about copying the style of someone else. Writing on the topic, ‘A troop of apes’, he drew analogies from nature (lyre bird, jays, ostriches and apes) to state that, “life abounds in mimicry” and if our tendency to imitation is so strong and impossible to eradicate, then human beings must select “worthy models.”[9]

Be Yourself
The great hope for this new book is that it might stimulate among its readers one of the major themes of F W Boreham—that each person, with their God-given gifts might develop their unique style:

“He sees as nobody else sees. He must therefore paint or preach or pray or write as nobody else does. He must be himself: must see with his own eyes and utter that vision in the terms of his own personality.”[10]

Dr. Geoff Pound.

Image: Front Cover of A Packet of Surprises: The Best Essays and Sermons of F W Boreham.

[1] T Howard Crago, The Story of F W Boreham (London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1961), 172-174.
[2] J J North, New Zealand Baptist, April 1943.
[3] Review of Whisper of God, (n.p., n.d.). This review appears in a cutting that Boreham kept in his own copy of his book Whisper of God.
[4] Lindsay L Newnham, ‘Recycling by Dr F W Boreham’, Our yesterdays 5 (Melbourne: Victorian Baptist Historical Society, 1997), 78.
[5] Crago, The Story of F W Boreham, 179.
[6] Crago, The Story of F W Boreham, 172-173.
[7] F W Boreham, My pilgrimage (London: The Epworth Press, 1940), 98-103.
[8] F W Boreham, I forgot to say, 42.
[9] F W Boreham, Mercury, 8 October 1955.
[10] Boreham, Mercury, 9 September 1950.

Boreham, Boreham Everywhere

noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Pound) — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 07:30:00 +0000

The Kibitzer writes about how he has recently been hearing the name ‘Boreham’ everywhere.

Dr. Geoff Pound

Image: The Armadale Baptist Church in Melbourne, Australia that Boreham pastored in the 1920s. How did he become so well know that even people like The Kibitzer are surprised? FWB became known internationally through his books.

New Boreham Book: The Chalice of Life

noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Pound) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 15:52:00 +0000

Charge Your Glasses
According to Michael Dalton, my publishing partner, our new F W Boreham book, The Chalice of Life, is scheduled for printing today—Friday 13 June 2008.

Mike has information on his F W Boreham Publishing News site about how you may get a copy quickly and ensure you can read it and review it before it runs off the shelves.

One of the reasons why this book will be popular is that while it has some essays that have been previously published there are some pages that have never have published before.

Ordering and Purchasing
Mike says: “Don't miss these two new books. If you can't wait to order Chalice, you can send a PayPal payment of $7.00 for each book ordered and $3.50 for shipping and handling (add $1.00 for each additional book shipped) to dalton.michael@sbcglobal.net. You can also send a check to Mike Dalton, 2163 Fern Street, Eureka, CA 95503. Checks should be made out to Mike Dalton.”

“This is just if you want to preorder. The first books should be available for shipping towards the end of the month. Credit card orders will have to wait until I have the book listed on Amazon and AbeBooks. I won't do that until I have them in my possession.

Sample
To give you a sip and a taster I have posted the foreword that I have written for this book.

Foreword
This book is a collection of five addresses that F W Boreham delivered on some major stages of life and this quintet is accompanied by two further essays in which the author develops the theme of life’s milestones.

Most of these essays were written soon after Boreham attained the particular milestone even though for his later lecture series he gave them a polish and wrote a new one for a stage he had not written about earlier.

It is good to reflect on Frank Boreham’s life at the time he reached each age as he draws much upon his own experience. At the age of thirty (1901) F W Boreham was married with one daughter, he was pastor of the Mosgiel Baptist church in New Zealand, contributor to the Taieri Advocate and the Otago Daily Times, editor of the New Zealand Baptist, and President of the Baptist Union. At the age of forty (1911) he had two more daughters, was pastor of the Hobart Baptist Tabernacle, he had authored several books and he was soon to begin his marathon commitment with the Hobart Mercury. At the age of fifty (1921) Boreham was pastor of the Armadale Baptist church in Melbourne, he had fathered a boy and another daughter in this last decade and his publishing ministry was in top gear. At the age of sixty (1931) F W Boreham was officially retired from pastoral ministry and was serving as a minister-at-large, across the denominations of the church and undertaking preaching and teaching tours overseas. At the age of seventy (1941), Dr Boreham had published his autobiography, in which he signaled that he had entered into the final stage of life. This was not entirely accurate as he churned out several more books and his weekly ministry at Scot’s Church was blossoming.

It is interesting to note that F W Boreham did not have an article on Life at Twenty, especially as he was fond of quoting Southey who said, “However long a person’s life, the first twenty years represent by far the biggest half of it.”[1] It is also significant that Boreham did not appear to write an article on Life at Eighty, even though he was still publishing books and preaching weekly.

F W Boreham remarks in one of these addresses that the one thing that each of these milestones has is life. F W Boreham was a self-confessed “lover of life.”[2] This theme pulsates through this book and in all his writing and preaching. In an essay on the coming of Spring Boreham reflects on the source of his love for life when saying, “I have learned that my quenchless longing for life is, after all, all unconsciously, a secret, unutterable yearning after God; for how can you conceive of life apart from Him?[3]

Throughout the pages of this volume one feels the sheer exuberance that Boreham had for life. He is possessed with a sense of wonder about the newness of each day:

“Half the fun of waking up in the morning is the feeling that you have come upon a day that the world has never seen before, a day that is certain to do things that no other day has ever done. Half the pleasure of welcoming a new-born baby is the absolute certainty that here you have a packet of amazing surprises....Here is novelty, originality, an infinity of bewildering possibility.[4]

It is Frank Boreham’s love of life that motivates his curiosity and his ministry to people:

“I have so thoroughly relished the little bit of life that was doled out to me that I find myself clamoring for all the lives that I can see....the same hunger underlies my passion for biography and even my fondness for the Bible. …Life has been so sweet to me that I like to mark the relish with which others tell their enjoyment of it.[5]

F W Boreham was very attentive to anniversaries and he kept a ‘birthday book’ or Personal Almanac in which he recorded special dates. He noted down each year the arrival of the first swallow[6] and the exact day that the elms around his house, “attired themselves in their new spring dresses.”[7] Many of his editorials commenced with reference to the birth or death of his subject. Two of his books contain the word ‘milestone’ in the title. His autobiography is a comprehensive record of the important dates of his life and family and it describes the way he remembered and celebrated the key events of his ministry.

The Chalice of Life is not so much about the exact ages as the general stages of life—their pitfalls and their possibilities. What then was Boreham’s favorite stage in life? This question is like asking him to decide which of his children was his favorite. Concerning his three churches he spoke with equal warmth and affection, even though he highlighted their different qualities. In a similar fashion and at the risk of being told that “all his swans were geese” Boreham writes with high commendation of each age and stage of life. What is happening is akin to the way he explained his growing love for Australia, “Life has a wonderful way of coaxing us into a frame of mind in which we not only become reconciled to our lot: we actually fall in love with it.”[8]

In the final two essays of this book, ‘So It’s Your Birthday!’ and ‘Life’s Landmarks’, we see the way F W Boreham is not merely registering dates in a diary or counting commemorations on a calendar. His approach is to greet each day with expectancy and to make the momentous decisions with which life confronts us. F W Boreham claimed that the greatest day of a person’s life was not their birthday, their wedding anniversary or the date of their death but, “The greatest day in a man's life is the day on which he finds himself overwhelmed and bowed to earth by a sense of the greatness of God.”[9]

Enjoy this book and most importantly, drink deeply from “the chalice of life.”[10]

Dr. Geoff Pound.

Image: Front cover of The Chalice of Life, so beautifully created by Laura Zugzda.

P.S. F W Boreham’s son, Frank, told me that his wife Betty did most of the proof reading of his books. The ship would dock in Melbourne, the proofs would be delivered the next day and FWB and Betty would read and make the corrections before the ship left in a couple of days to return to England. When the first copy of each new book appeared FWB would take it warmly, kiss it and pass it to other members of the family for them to do the same. Producing Boreham books was a concern and a delight of the whole Boreham family.

Footnotes
[1] F W Boreham, My Pilgrimage (London: The Epworth Press, 1940), 91.
[2] F W Boreham, The Golden Milestone (London: Charles H. Kelly, 1915), 9
[3] F W Boreham, The Three Half-Moons (London: The Epworth Press, 1929), 125.
[4] F W Boreham, Faces in the Fire (London: The Epworth Press, 1916), 14.
[5] F W Boreham, On the Other Side of the Hill (London: The Epworth Press, 1917), 173.
[6] Boreham, The Golden Milestone, 34.
[7] F W Boreham, The Passing of John Broadbanks (London: The Epworth Press, 1936), 261.
[8] Boreham, My Pilgrimage, 137.
[9] F W Boreham, A Witch’s Brewing (London: The Epworth Press, 1932), 155.
[10] F W Boreham, A Bunch of Everlastings (London: The Epworth Press, 1920), 88.

Boreham on Nature

noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Pound) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 01:45:00 +0000

All the untamed and untutored tribes of Central Africa and of the South Seas have dwelt with Nature for ages. And what has she taught them? They sit round their horrible camp-fires and tear like beasts at human flesh, whilst all the sublimities and transcendencies of Nature spread themselves out on every hand. Nor need we journey to Africa or the coral islands. Facts are stubborn things; and the stern facts of life, as reflected by our police-courts, demonstrate the folly of idealizing the bush. Some of our most revolting criminal cases come from those districts in the Never-Never Country where every prospect pleases, where the landscape is a riot of glorious forestry, and where the earth is a gay profusion of wild flowers. Yet those cases reveal a sordidness, an animalism, and a brutality that have shocked the very dwellers in the slums. Now why these terrible murder cases? Does Nature never say to her children, 'Thou shalt not steal ‘Thou shalt not kill I'? Does Nature give no code of morals to the children of Nature? 'Alas!' cries Nature, as she hangs her head, 'it is not in me! It is not in me!'

Yes, the dregs of life are not always found in city slums. The bush may become bestial as well as beatific. Let no one misunderstand me. I am not contending that the country is worse than the town. I am instituting no comparison. I am simply saying that there is nothing in the civilization of our cities that can save us apart from the gospel, and that there is nothing in the beauty of the bush that can save us apart from the gospel. Jesus is the only hope of country and of town. And the transcendent glory of the churches is that they exist to preach HIM.

F W Boreham, The Modesty of the Bush, The Golden Milestone, (London: Charles Kelley, 1915), 128-130.

Boreham on the Prophetic Use of Names

noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Pound) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 12:15:00 +0000

It is very odd, the way in which history and prophecy meet and mingle in the naming of the baby.

A friend of mine has just named his child after John Wesley. He has clearly done so in the fond hope that the august virtues of the great Methodist may be duplicated and revived in a generation that is coming. It is an ingenious device for transferring the moral excellences of the remote past to the dim and distant regions of an unborn future. The phenomenon sometimes becomes positively pathetic.

I remember reading, in the stirring annals of the Melanesian Mission, of a native boy whom Bishop John Selwyn had in training at Norfolk Island. He had been brought from one of the most barbarous of the South Sea peoples, and did not promise particularly well. One day Bishop Selwyn had occasion to rebuke him for his stubborn and refractory behaviour. The boy instantly flew into a passion and struck the Bishop a cruel blow in the face. It was an unheard-of incident, and all who saw it stood aghast. The Bishop said nothing, but turned and walked quietly away. The conduct of the lad continued to be most recalcitrant, and he was at last returned to his own island as incorrigible. There he soon relapsed into all the debasements of a savage and cannibal people.

Many years afterwards a missionary on that island was summoned post-haste to visit a sick man. It proved to be Dr. Selwyn's old student. He was dying, and desired Christian baptism. The missionary asked him by what name he would like to be known. “Call me John Selwyn,” the dying man replied, “because he caught me what Christ was like that day when I struck him.”

F W Boreham, ‘Naming the Baby’, Mushrooms on the Moor (London: Charles H Kelly, 1915), 253-254.

Image: “Call me John Selwyn.”

Further: F W Boreham wrote a biography on Bishop John Selwyn.

Boreham on Living up to your Name

noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Pound) — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 10:59:00 +0000

Booker T. Washington, the slave who carved his way to statesmanship, tells us that his greatest difficulty lay in regard to a name. Slaves have no names; no authentic genealogy; no family history; no ancestral traditions. They have, therefore, nothing to live up to. Mr. Booker Washington himself invented his own name. `More than once,' he says `I tried to picture myself in the position of a boy or man with an honoured and distinguished ancestry. As it is, I have no idea who my grandmother was. The very fact that the white boy is conscious that, if he fails, he will disgrace the whole family record is of tremendous value in helping him to resist temptations. And the fact that the individual has behind him a proud family history serves as a stimulus to help him to overcome obstacles when striving for success.'

Compelled to Honour the Name
Every student of biography knows how frequently people have been restrained from doing evil, or inspired to lofty achievement, by the honour in which a cherished memory has compelled them to hold the names they are allowed to bear.

Every schoolboy knows the story of the Grecian coward whose name was Alexander. His cowardice seemed the more contemptible because of his distinguished name; and his commander, Alexander the Great, ordered him either to change his name or to prove himself brave.

F. W. Boreham, ‘Naming the Baby’, Mushrooms on the Moor (London: Charles H Kelly, 1915), 248-249.

Image: Booker T. Washington

Boreham on Getting Over Things

noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Pound) — Thu, 29 May 2008 12:29:00 +0000

WE get over things. It is the most amazing faculty that we possess. War or pestilence; drought or famine; fire or flood; it does not matter. However devastating the catastrophe, however frightful the slaughter, however total the eclipse, we surmount our sorrows and find ourselves still smiling when the storm is overpast.

I remember once penetrating into the wild and desolate interior of New Zealand. From a jagged and lonely eminence I surveyed a landscape that almost frightened one. Not a house was in sight, nor a road, nor one living creature, nor any sign of civilization. I looked in every direction at what seemed to have been the work of angry Titans. Far as the eye could see, the earth around me appeared to have been a battle-field on which an army of giants had pelted each other with mountains. The whole country was broken, weird, precipitous, and grand. In every direction huge cliffs towered perpendicularly about you; bottomless abysses yawned at your feet; and every scarped pinnacle and beetling crag scowled menacingly at your littleness and scowled defiance at your approach. One wondered by what titanic forces the country had been so ruthlessly crushed and crumbled and torn to shreds. Did any startled eye witness this volcanic frolic? What a sight it must have been to have watched these towering ranges split and scattered; to have seen the placid snowclad heights shivered, like fragile vases, to fragments; to have beheld the mountains tossed about like pebbles; to have seen the valleys torn and rent and twisted; and the rivers flung back in terror to make for themselves new channels as best they could! It must have been a fearsome and wondrous spectacle to have observed the slumbering forces of the universe in such a burst of passion! Nature must have despaired of her quiet and sylvan landscape. `It is ruined,' she sobbed; `it can never be the same again!'

No, it can never be the same again. The bright colours of the kaleidoscope do not form the same mosaic a second time. But Nature has got over her grief, for all that. For see! All up these tortured and angular valleys the great evergreen bush is growing in luxurious profusion. Every slope is densely clothed with a glorious tangle of magnificent forestry. From the branches that wave triumphantly from the dizzy heights above, to those that mingle with the delicate mosses in the valley, the verdure nowhere knows a break. Even on the steep rocky faces the persistent vegetation somehow finds for itself a precarious foothold; and where the trees fear to venture the lichen atones for their absence. Up through every crack and cranny the ferns are pushing their graceful fronds. It is a marvellous recovery.

Indeed, the landscape is really better worth seeing today than in those tranquil days, centuries ago, before the Titans lost their temper, and began to splinter the summits.

F W Boreham, ‘On Getting Over Things, Mushrooms on the Moor (London: Charles H Kelly, 1915), 236-238.

Image: Mount Ruapehu, NZ (still an active volcano but vegetation rejuvenating below); “We get over things. It is the most amazing faculty that we possess.”

Boreham on My Study

noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Pound) — Wed, 28 May 2008 15:39:00 +0000

Professor David Smith tells of a great lesson that he learned, as a young minister, from his old teacher and friend, the eminent Professor A. B. Bruce.

`He introduced me,' Professor Smith says, 'to my first charge; and that Sunday night, as we sat in my study, he said to me, "You will get no inspiration from your surroundings here; see that you seek it from your books."

I remembered his counsel, and I found it good. The years which I spent in that quiet parish proved very profitable. Many an evening I would come home sick of petty jealousies, and fretted by trivial narrownesses, and would get into my study; and, behold, I was in a large and wealthy place and in the fellowship of the immortals. My study was the most sacred and wonderful place on earth to me. It was my refuge and my sanctuary.'

My sanctuary, mark you! And it was probably with this reminiscence of his early ministerial days in mind that Professor Smith penned for us the following verses :

I bless You, Lord, that when my life
Is as a troubled sea,
I have, remote from its rough strife,
Harbours to shelter me.

I bless You for my home, where love
Her sweet song ever sings,
And Peace spreads, like a nesting dove,
Her gentle, brooding wings.

And for this chamber of desire,
Where my dear books abide,
My constant friends that never tire,
Teachers that never chide.

F W Boreham, ‘The Holly-Tree’, The Uttermost Star (London: The Epworth Press, 1919), 239-240.

Image: “My study was the most sacred and wonderful place on earth to me.”

Boreham on the Mayor of Mosgiel

noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Pound) — Tue, 27 May 2008 11:03:00 +0000

There is a great story in this essay on Tammas Dalgleish and a visit to a meeting of Dr. Grattan Guinness. I am posting the entire essay:

For many a long year Tammas Dalgleish was Mayor of Mosgiel, and reigned without a rival. At election after election the little old gentleman was returned unopposed. Indeed, it came to be regarded as the natural thing. Nobody quite knew why. I have a notion that it was just because Tammas was old. The other members of the Borough Council were aggressive young townsmen, the warmth of whose ardour incubated all kinds of municipal policies, and the restlessness of whose brains littered the council table with an infinite variety of schemes. The result was inevitable. As soon as Councillor MacDonald stated his policy, the council fell into two parts as though it had been cleft by a sword. Half the councillors said 'Hear, hear,' and half shook their heads sagaciously, and muttered to each other that it would never do.

And when, a few weeks later, Councillor Campbell outlined his scheme, the council was once more rent in twain. Half the councillors supported; half opposed.

The same fate befell each of the other councillors in turn. There was only one member of the council who never concocted a fresh policy or formulated a new scheme. That was Tammas Dalgleish. His abstinence in that respect gave him an immense advantage when the mayoral election came round. Councillor MacDonald would have made an excellent Mayor, and his claims upon the honour were considerable; but then, he had a scheme! His elevation to the mayoral chair would place him in a position of commanding influence; it would invest him with a casting vote and other dangerous prerogatives; and it would probably lead to the adoption of his scheme. The hostile councillors said once more that this would never do. And so it came to pass that none of the councillors, save Tammas Dalgleish, could command a majority of votes when the elections came round. Year by year, therefore, as regularly as the second Saturday in November returned, it was announced from the verandah of the council-chambers that only one nomination had been received, and that Councillor Dalgleish had been declared elected for a further term. The little old gentleman beamed, expressed his sense of the honour that had been done him, and promised that he would endeavour to prove himself worthy of the confidence of the citizens. Which meant, being interpreted, that he promised to sink peacefully into the chair for another year, never daring to think out a policy himself, or even to say Yea or Nay to any of the troublesome schemes that the younger and noisier councillors might present. It all passed off very pleasantly. There was speaking and cheering and drinking of healths. Everybody seemed perfectly satisfied with the turn things had taken. And certainly Tammas Dalgleish was.

He was an amiable little old man, not destitute of frailties. One of these was his excessive modesty. He was terribly afraid that we should forget either that he was a Scotsman, or that he was Mayor of Mosgiel. He had every reason to be proud of both these circumstances; and, as a matter of fact, there was not the slightest danger of our forgetting either; but he was obviously nervous about it. In the course of my twelve years at Mosgiel I came to know him pretty well, although only on two occasions did I have direct dealings with him. Of those two events I propose to tell the story now; and if into the first narrative there steals a suspicion of comedy, it will be seen that the, second story is sufficiently dramatic to atone for that defect in its predecessor. But to my tale.

It was in the days of the South African War. When it was announced that Lord Kitchener was conferring with the Boer leaders at Pretoria, everybody felt that peace was not far off. This conviction fastened upon the mind of old Tammas Dalgleish, and he decided to call a meeting of citizens to arrange for a worthy celebration of the glad event—when it should come. He was good enough to call at the manse and ask me to be present. I very cheerfully consented. At the meeting, over which he presided, a programme was drawn up, a committee was appointed to carry it into effect, and, at His Worship's suggestion, I was appointed convener. We soon got things into shape and only awaited the declaration of peace to have everything moving. At last the welcome signal was given. The screaming of syrens, the ringing of bells, and the booming of guns apprised all and sundry that the war in South Africa had passed into history. I hurried down to the council-chambers, found His Worship there before me, and we soon got to work. The morning was occupied with the distribution of medals to all the children of the town. The main event of the day was timed for two o'clock. All the townspeople were asked to assemble at the junction of the main streets; led by the local band, they were to sing first the Doxology and then the National Anthem; and, after that, the procession was to start.

At two o'clock, however, rain was threatening. The outlook for the procession and the subsequent events was very gloomy. When I entered the council-chamber a few minutes before the hour, I found His Worship in a state of extreme tension. He was tortured by visions of trees being planted and foundation-stones laid under torrential skies.
'Come on,' he said impatiently, as I saluted him, 'let us get the procession away at once! What's to be done?'
'Very little, your Worship,’ handing him a fresh copy of the programme. 'You have simply to ask the people to join in singing to the music of the band, first the Doxology and then the National Anthem.'

I saw at once that he was displeased. He was for waving his hand and ordering the procession to start. I held out for the programme, the whole programme, and nothing but the programme.

`Well,' he exclaimed at last, in a more conciliatory tone, 'let us split the difference. Let us drop the Doxology and sing the National Anthem!'

I pointed out that the Doxology was singularly appropriate to the occasion; that it was specially decreed at the meeting of citizens; that it was on the printed programme; and that its omission would seriously wound the sentiments of many of the citizen.

His worship lost all patience. I saw ten minutes later that he imagined the Doxology to be some ponderous kind of oratorio that might detain the procession for a good part of the afternoon. But I did not grasp his point of view until, looking daggers at me, he sprang up, rushed bareheaded on to the verandah, raised his hand to secure silence, called at the top of his voice, `The band will lead the people in singing the Doxology,' and then added, with terrific emphasis, 'One verse only.'

In the years that followed, it was quite a common occurrence, when things were getting lively in the council-chamber, for one of the councillors to suggest that they should sing together the second verse of the Doxology! And His Worship always smiled good-humouredly.

It happened, a year or two later, that Dr. Harry Grattan Guinness came to Dunedin and conducted a series of special meetings in the largest theatre there. I was unable to go into town to any of the earlier meetings, but I saw that the series was to conclude with a couple of illustrated lectures, one on South America and the other on the Congo. I promised myself at least one of these; and, on the night of the South American lecture, I set off for the city.

The lecture and the pictures far exceeded my anticipations. I was delighted, and resolved to return next evening. On my way to the station the following evening, whom should I meet but His Worship the Mayor? To this hour I cannot tell why I suggested such a thing; but before I knew what I was saying I was inviting him to accompany me! He was the last man on earth whom you would think of inviting to a missionary lecture.

`You ought to come, sir,' I was saying. 'I went last night, and did not mean to go again; but the lecture was simply splendid, and the pictures were magnificent. I am sure you would enjoy it.'

Before I realized what had happened, he had accepted my invitation, and we were walking side by side on our way to the station. I spent most of the time in the train wondering by what strange impulse I had asked His Worship to accompany me. That riddle was still unread when we reached the theatre. It was filling fast. Surveying the crowd we noticed a couple of vacant seats about half-way up the area and slipped into them.

As on the previous evening, the lecture was most interesting, and the pictures were among the best of the kind that I have ever seen. For all practical purposes we had left New Zealand miles behind, and were in the wilds of Central Africa. An occasional side-glance at my companion told me that he was as interested as I was. Then, suddenly, a change came over the spirit of our dream.

'I propose now to show you,' said the lecturer, 'the photographs of some of the men who have laid down their lives upon the Congo.'

I was afraid that this purely missionary aspect of African life would possess less interest for His Worship, and I was prepared for yawns and other indications of boredom. The coloured pictures of African scenery gave place to the portrait of a fine young fellow in the prime of early manhood. To my inexpressible astonishment His Worship almost sprang from his seat, grasped the back of the chair in front of him, and stared at the screen with strained and terrible intensity.
`It's my boy!' he cried, loudly enough to be heard some distance away. `It's my boy! It's my boy!'

I naturally supposed that he had been affected by some curious similarity of appearance. Fortunately his agitation had not been noticed from the platform, and the lecturer went on.
`This,' he said,' is a young fellow named Dalgleish who came to us as an engineer to superintend the construction of our mission steamer. . . . '

`It's my boy!' cried my companion, overcome now by uncontrollable emotion. It's my boy, my poor boy!'

Neither of us had eyes or ears for anything that followed. His Worship sat beside me, his face buried in his hands, swaying from side to side in silent agony. Every now and again he would start up, and I had the greatest difficulty in restraining him from rushing to the platform to ask more about his dead son.

Sitting there beside him, it came back to me that he had once told me of a boy who ran away from home and went to London. 'We were too angry at the time to answer his letters,' he had said, 'and so, after awhile, he gave up writing, and we lost all trace of him.'

When the great crowd melted away that night, I took His Worship to the lecturer's room, and introduced them to each other. The identity of the fallen missionary was established beyond all doubt, and Dr. Grattan Guinness arranged to come out to Mosgiel and spend the next day with the Mayor and his wife.

He did. I was not present, and I do not know what took place. But I often fancied, from little indications that I noticed afterwards, that the things that were said, and the tears that were shed, in the course of that visit were a means of grace to my friend, His Worship the Mayor.

F W Boreham, ‘His Worship the Mayor’, The Uttermost Star (London: Epworth Press, 1919), 217-225.

Image: Aerial view of Mosgiel today.

Boreham: The Stimulant of a Noble Purpose

noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Pound) — Tue, 20 May 2008 15:54:00 +0000

I came across James Ryle’s web site today on which he posts ‘rylisms’.

In his most recent posting James gave this fine quote:

F. W. Boreham wrote, “There is no intellectual stimulant so intoxicating as the formation of a noble purpose, the conception of a sudden resolve, the making of a great decision.”

Follow the link to read the rest of this interesting post entitled, The Unflappable Champion. Thanks James.

Dr. Geoff Pound

Image: “Pursuing a noble purpose.”

Boreham on Grasping & Passing the Torch

noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Pound) — Thu, 15 May 2008 07:15:00 +0000

The Brighton Baptist Church in Melbourne is close to the Armadale Baptist Church, where F W Boreham served as pastor.

On the history page of the Brighton Baptist web site are some words and a quote from Dr Boreham who participated in the church’s centenary celebrations:

“Brighton Baptist Church has a long history, being founded in 1851. We are still encouraged and remember the words of F.W. Boreham as part of the 1951 Centenary celebrations: ‘we grasp the torch handed to us by noble predecessors, and who, in due time, pass it on to eager and faithful successors. Each a link in a golden chain.’”

Dr Geoff Pound

Image: “pass it on to eager and faithful successors.”

Boreham with Truth for Ordinary Lives

noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Pound) — Wed, 14 May 2008 03:35:00 +0000

I am constantly amazed at how F W Boreham’s books continue to be quoted and increasingly by members of the younger generation.

Check out this article by Nathan Zacharias and also posted by Tim, who finds meaning in Boreham’s essay, The Poppies in the Corn, and applies it skillfully to his own life and clan.

Image: Poppies in the Corn

Geoff Pound on the Significance of 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Pound) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 07:54:00 +0000

Important Anniversary
F W Boreham once wrote, “When a man has been fifty years in his grave it ought to be possible to review his work dispassionately. The sentiment that is born of human fondness has by that time evaporated; and the prejudices that arise from personal animosity have died down.”

Next year (2009) it will be fifty years since the death of F W Boreham and for many reasons it will be an important year to reflect on his contribution and distil the insightful lessons from his life.

Teaching and Preaching
I am booking in dates now for preaching and teaching appointments in different countries in 2009 and I wanted to see if you (your seminary, church, conference organizers etc.) were interested.

This might include:

* A one off lecture or after dinner talk about F W Boreham (with his books available for purchase afterwards).

* Several lectures, perhaps for pastors and leaders at an annual conference, which take a Boreham theme. For instance, I have been working on a series of lectures to inspire effective preaching and communication in various media with the title, ‘Fancy a Preacher Named Bore-ham: The Communication Secrets of F W Boreham’.

* I also have spoken on Boreham and His commitment to Public Theology—getting the conversation about God out of the churches and engaging with the important issues that are facing society.

* I am not confined to Boreham themes as I regularly lecture in different parts of the world especially on Leadership (Getting a Vision for your organization, Leading into Constructive Change, Working constructively through conflict) and on Mission (examining the many dimensions that make up the mission of Jesus Christ).

* I am also keen to share something of the vision and opportunities of service through Theologians Without Borders and to speak about Creative Things that Are Happening in Theological Education and how this Creativity can be Engendered in ministry and in the seminary.

RSVP
If you have anything from a vague idea to a definitive invitation, do let me know at the earliest time so I can coordinate the different appointments.

Dr. Geoff Pound
geoffpound@yahoo.com.au

Images: Frank William Boreham; Geoff Pound

Boreham on Fate, Destiny and Providence

noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Pound) — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 16:21:00 +0000

I was reading the other day Commander J W Gambier’s Links in my Life, and was amused at the curious inconsistency which led the author first to sneer at Providence and then to bear striking witness to its fidelity.

As a young fellow the Commander came to Australia and worked on a way-back station, but he had soon had enough. ‘I was to try what fortune could do for a poor man; but I believed in personal endeavour and the recognition of it by Providence. I did not know Providence.'
‘I did not know Providence!’ sneers our young bushman….

But on the very same page that contains the sneer Commander Gambler tells this story. When he was leaving England the old cabman who drove him to the station said to him, ‘If you see my son Tom in Australia, ask him to write home and tell us how he's getting on.’ ‘I explained,’ the Commander tells us, ‘that Australia was a big country, and asked him if he had any idea of the name of the place his son had gone to. He had not.’

As soon as Commander Gambier arrived at Newcastle, in New South Wales, he met an exceptionally ragged ostler. As the ostler handed him his horse, Mr. Gambler felt an irresistible though inexplicable conviction that this was the old cabman's son. He felt absolutely sure of it; so he said:
‘Your name is Fowles, isn't it?’
He looked amazed, and seemed to think that his questioner had some special reason for asking him, and was at first disinclined to answer. But Mr. Gambier pressed him and said, ‘Your father, the Cheltenham cab-driver, asked me to look you up.’

He then admitted that he was the man, and Mr. Gambier urged him to write to his father. All this on the selfsame page as the ugly sneer about Providence!

And a dozen pages farther on I came upon a still more striking story. Commander Gambier was very unfortunate, very homesick, and very miserable in Australia. He could not make up his mind whether to stay here or return to England. ‘At last,’ he says, ‘I resolved to leave it to fate.’ The only difference that I can discover between the 'Providence' whom Commander Gambier could not trust, and the `fate' to which he was prepared to submit all his fortunes, is that the former is spelt with a capital letter and the latter with a small one. But to the story.

‘On the road where I stood was a small bush grog shop, and the coaches pulled up here to refresh the ever-thirsty bush traveller. At this spot the up-country and down-country coaches met, and I resolved that I would get into whichever came in first, leaving it to destiny to settle.

Looking down the long, straight track over which the up-country coach must come, I saw a cloud of dust, and well can I remember the curious sensation I had that I was about to turn my back upon England for ever! But in the other direction a belt of scrub hid the view, the road making a sharp turn. And then, almost simultaneously, I heard a loud crack of a whip, and round this corner, at full gallop, came the down coach, pulling up at the shanty not three minutes before the other! I felt like a man reprieved, for my heart was really set on going home; and I jumped up into the down coach with a great sense of relief!’ And thus Mr. Gambier returned to England, became a Commander in the British Navy, and one of the most distinguished ornaments of the service. He sneers at 'Providence,' yet trusts to `fate,' and leaves everything to `destiny’!”

Boreham concludes that regardless of his sneering and confusion, Gambier is being guided by the Hand that longs to lead us home.

F W Boreham, ‘When the Cows Come Home’, Mushrooms on the Moor (London: Charles H Kelly, 1915), 205-208.

Image: “I jumped up into the down coach with a great sense of relief!”

Boreham on Children and Simplicity

noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Pound) — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 16:56:00 +0000

In our last posting we heard F W Boreham talk of the importance of children and his indebtedness to children in his preaching ministry—“The children in the congregation are my salvation.” This new excerpt is from the same sermon and he extends the themes of children and simplicity in good communication:

Style of the Masters
Can anyone imagine John Wesley talking to his summer-evening crowd at Dublin about ‘nullifidian,’ or quoting German?

I will say nothing of the Galilean preacher. The common people heard Him gladly. He was so simple and therefore so sublime.

A little child, especially a little child of a distinctly restless and mischievous propensity, is really a great help to a minister, and it is a shame to deprive the good man of such assistance. It is only by such help that some of us can hope to approximate to real sublimity.

Keep Your Eyes on the Waiters
Lord Beaconsfield used to say that, in making after-dinner speeches, he kept his eye on the waiters. If they were unmoved, he knew that he was in the realms of mediocrity. But when they grew excited and waved their napkins, he knew that he was getting home.

Pick out the Stupidest
Lord Cockburn, who was for some time Lord Chief Justice of Great Britain, when asked for the secret of his extraordinary success at the bar, replied sagely, ‘When I was addressing a jury, I invariably picked out the stupidest-looking fellow of the lot, and addressed myself specially to him—for this good reason: I knew that if I convinced him I should be sure to carry all the rest!’

Speak to the Waiters
Dr. Thomas Guthrie, in addressing gatherings of ministers, used to tell this story of Lord Cockburn with immense relish, and earnestly commended its philosophy to their consideration. I was reading the other day that Dr. Boyd Carpenter, formerly Bishop of Ripon and now Canon of Westminster, on being asked if he felt nervous when preaching before Queen Victoria, replied, ‘I never address the Queen at all. I know there will be present the Queen, the Princes, the household, and the servants down to the scullery-maid, and I preach to the scullery-maid.’

Little children do not attend political dinners such as Lord Beaconsfield adorned; nor Courts of Justice such as Lord Cockburn addressed; nor Royal chapels like that in which Dr. Boyd Carpenter officiated. And, in the absence of the children, the only chance of reaching sublimity that offered itself to these unhappy orators lay in making good use of the waiter, the stupid juryman, and the scullery-maid…

Discuss Manuscripts with Your Students
Robert Louis Stevenson knew what he was doing when he discussed every sentence of Treasure Island with his schoolboy step-son before giving it its final form. It was by that wise artifice that one of the greatest stories in our language came to be written…

Expressing Love with Simplicity
We do not make love in the language of the psychologist; we make love in the language of the little child. When life approaches to sublimity, it always expresses itself with simplicity. In the depth of mortal anguish, or at the climax of human joy, we do not use a grandiloquent and incomprehensible phraseology. We talk in monosyllables. As we grow old, and draw near to the gates of the grave, we become more and more simple.

Perfect Simplicity
In his declining years, John Newton wrote, ‘When I was young I was sure of many things. There are only two things of which I am sure now; one is that I am a miserable sinner, and the other that Christ is an all-sufficient Saviour.’ What is this but the soul garbing itself in the most perfect simplicities as the only fitting raiment in which it can greet the everlasting sublimities?

Sublimity and Simplicity
‘Here are sublimity and simplicity together!’ exclaimed John Wesley on that hot July night at Dublin. ‘How can any one that would speak as the oracles of God use harder words than are to be found here? By this I advise every young preacher to form his style!’

Aspiring to be Great
‘He who aspires to be a great poet—as sublime as Milton—must first become a little child!’ declares the greatest of all littérateurs.

‘Whosoever shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven!’ says the Master Himself, taking a little child and setting him in the midst of them.

‘Pity my simplicity!’ pleads this little thing with its soft arms round my neck.
‘Give me that simplicity!’ say I.

F W Boreham, ‘Pity My Simplicity!’ Mushrooms on the Moor (London: Charles H Kelly, 1915), 153-157.

Image: “taking a little child…”

Boreham on Children in Church

noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Pound) — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 16:22:00 +0000

I am told that, away beyond the Never-Never ranges [remote areas of Australian outback] there is a church from which the children are excluded before the sermon begins.

I wish my informant had not told me of its existence. I am not often troubled with nightmare, my supper being quite a frugal affair.

But just occasionally I find myself a victim of the terror by night. And when I am mercifully awakened, and asked why I am gasping so horribly and perspiring so freely. I have to confess that I was dreaming that I had somehow become the minister of that childless congregation.

As is usual after nightmare, I look round with a sense of inexpressible thankfulness on discovering that it was only a horrid dream. An appointment to such a charge would be to me a most fearsome and terrifying prospect. I could not trust myself.

In a way, I envy the man who can hold his own under such circumstances. His transcendent powers enable him to preserve his sturdy humanness of character, his charming simplicity of diction, his graphic picturesqueness of phrase, and his exquisite winsomeness of behaviour without the extraneous assistance which the children render to some of us.

But I could not do it. I should go all to pieces. And so, when I dream that I have entered a pulpit from which I can survey no roguish young faces and mischievous wide-open eyes, I fancy I am ruined and undone. I watch with consternation as the little people file out during the hymn before the sermon, and I know that the sermon is doomed. The children in the congregation are my salvation.

F W Boreham, ‘Pity My Simplicity!’ Mushrooms on the Moor (London: Charles H Kelly, 1915), 151-152.

Image: “When I dream that I have entered a pulpit from which I can survey no roguish young faces and mischievous wide-open eyes, I fancy I am ruined and undone.”

Boreham on the Rabbi and the Wine Glass Breaking Wedding Custom

noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Pound) — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 03:37:00 +0000

I was chatting the other day with a Jewish rabbi. We were exchanging experiences and somehow the conversation drifted round to the marriage service.

‘I have heard,’ I said, ‘that, at a Jewish wedding, a wine-glass is broken as part of the symbolism of the ceremony. Is that a fact?’

‘Of course it is,’ he replied. ‘We hold aloft a wine-glass; let it fall and be shivered to atoms; and then, pointing to its fragments, we exhort the young couple to jealously guard the sacred relationship into which they have entered, since, once it is broken, it can never be restored.’

F W Boreham, ‘Jed Smith’ Shadows on the Wall (London: The Epworth Press), 200-201.

Image: Jewish groom breaking wine glass with his shoe.

Boreham on Strength of Character

noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Pound) — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 04:00:00 +0000

In my college days I used to go down to a quaint little English village for the weekend in order to conduct services in the village chapel on Sunday. I was always entertained by a little old lady whose face haunts me still. It was so very human, and so very wise, and withal so very beautiful; and the white ringlets on either side completed a perfect picture. She dwelt in a modest little cottage on top of the hill. It was a queer, tumble-down old place with crooked rafters and crazy lattice windows. Roses and honeysuckle clambered all over the porch, straggled along the walls, and even crept under the eaves into the cottage itself. The thing that impressed me when I first went was the extraordinary number of old Bessie's visitors.

On Saturday nights they came one after another, young men and sedate matrons, old men and tripping maidens, and each desired to see her alone. She was very old; she had known hunger and poverty; the deeply furrowed brow told of long and bitter trouble. She was a great sufferer, too, and daily wrestled with her pitiless disease. But, like the sturdier of the poplars by my gate, she had gathered into herself the force of all the cruel winds that had beaten so savagely upon her. And the result was that her own character had become so strong and so upright and so beautiful that she was recognized as the high-priestess of that English countryside, and every man and maiden who needed counsel or succour made a beaten path to her open door.

F W Boreham, ‘Gog and Magog’, Mushrooms on the Moor (London: Charles H Kelly, 1915), 136-137.

Image: The Populars by Paul Cezanne. “Like the sturdier of the poplars by my gate, she had gathered into herself the force of all the cruel winds that had beaten so savagely upon her.”

Boreham on the Value of Struggle

noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Pound) — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 13:18:00 +0000

Was it not Alfred Russel Wallace who tried to help an emperor-moth, and only harmed it by his ill-considered ministry?

He came upon the creature beating its wings and struggling wildly to force its passage through the narrow neck of its cocoon. He admired its fine proportions, eight inches from the tip of one wing to the tip of the other, and thought it a pity that so handsome a creature should be subjected to so severe an ordeal. He therefore took out his lancet and slit the cocoon. The moth came out at once; but its glorious colors never developed. The soaring wings never expanded. The indescribable hues and tints and shades that should have adorned them never appeared. The moth crept moodily about; drooped perceptibly; and presently died.

The furious struggle with the cocoon was Nature's wise way of developing the splendid wings and of sending the vital fluids pulsing through the frame until every particle blushed with their beauty. The naturalist had saved the little creature from the struggle, but had unintentionally ruined and slain it in the process.

F W Boreham, Mushrooms on the Moor (London: Charles H Kelly, 1915), 135-136.

Image: Emperor Moth—“its glorious colors never developed.”

Boreham on the ABC

noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Pound) — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 04:21:00 +0000

The following Boreham essay/sermon or a variation of it was included in a book entitled: Ian Macpherson (ed.), Sermons I Should Have Preached (London: The Epworth Press, 1964), 30-37.

I know a pastor who each year preaches a series of sermons entitled, ‘Sermons I would love to have written’. (This is a good idea especially over a holiday period or when the pastor needs to crib a little more time for other tasks). This collection is in a similar vein.

This sermon is an example of Boreham’s rich creativity and it is planned to be included in the forthcoming, ‘The Best Essays and Sermons of F. W. Boreham’. It is posted here by request.

A BOX OF BLOCKS

I
We had a birthday at our house today, and among the presents was a beautiful box of blocks. Each block represented one of the letters of the alphabet. As I saw them being arranged and rearranged upon the table, I fell a-thinking. For the alphabet has, in our time, come to its own. We go through life muttering an interminable and incomprehensible jargon of initials. We tack initials on to our names—fore and aft—and we like to see every one of them in its place. As soon as I open my eyes in the morning, the postman hands me a medley of circulars, postcards, and letters. One of them bids me attend the annual meeting of the S.P.C.A.; another reminds me of the monthly committee meeting of the M.C.M.; a third asks me to deliver an address at the P.S.A. In the afternoon I rush from an appointment at the Y.M.C.A. to speak on behalf of the W.C.T.U.; and then, having dropped in to pay my insurance premium at the A.M.P., I take the tram at the G.P.O., and ask the conductor to drop me at the A.B.C. I have accepted an invitation to a pleasant little function there—an invitation that is clearly marked R.S.V.P. And so on. There is no end to it. Life may be defined as a small amount of activity entirely surrounded by the letters of the alphabet.

Now the alphabet has a symbolism of its own. The man who coined the phrase 'as simple as A.B.C.' went mad; he went mad before he coined it. There are, it is true, a few simplicities sprinkled among the intricacies of this old world of ours; but the alphabet is not one of them. I protest that it is most unfair to call the alphabet simple. Nobody likes to be thought simple nowadays; see how frantically we preachers struggle to avoid any suspicion of the kind! Any person living would rather be called a sinner—or even a saint—than a simpleton. Why, then, affront the alphabet, which, as we have seen, is working a prodigious amount of overtime in our service, by applying to it so very opprobrious an epithet?

'As simple as A.B.C.,' indeed! Macaulay's schoolboy may not have been as omniscient as the historian would lead us to believe but he at least knew that there is nothing simple about the A.B.C. The alphabet is the hardest lesson that a child is called upon to learn. Latin roots, algebraic equations, and the Pons Asinorum are mere nothings in comparison. Grown-ups have short memories. They forget the stupendous difficulties that they surmounted in their earliest infancy; and their forgetfulness renders them pitiless and unsympathetic. Few of us recognize the strain in which a child's brain is involved when, for the first time, he confronts the alphabet. The whole thing is so arbitrary; there is no clue. In his noble essay on The Evolution of Language, Professor Henry Drummond shows that the alphabet is really a picture-gallery. 'First,' he says, `there was the onomatopoetic writing, the ideograph, the imitation of the actual object. This is the form we find in the Egyptian hieroglyphic. For a man a man is drawn, for a camel a camel, for a hut a hut. Then, to save time, the objects were drawn in shorthand—a couple of dashes for the limbs and one across, as in the Chinese, for a man; a square in the same language for a field; two strokes at an obtuse angle, suggesting the roof, for a house. To express further qualities, these abbreviated pictures were next compounded in ingenious ways. A man and a field together conveyed the idea of wealth; a roof and a woman represented home; and so on.' And thus, little by little, our letters were evolved. But the pictures have become so truncated, abbreviated, and emasculated, in the course of this evolutionary process, that a child, though notoriously fond of pictures, sees nothing fascinating in the letters of the alphabet. There is absolutely nothing about the first to suggest the sound A; nothing about the second to suggest the sound B. The whole thing is so incomprehensible; how can he ever hope to master it? An adult brain, introduced to such a conglomeration for the first time, would reel and stagger; is it any wonder that these childish cheeks get flushed or that the curly head turns at times very feverishly upon the pillow?

The sequence, too, is as baffling as the symbols. There is every reason why two should come between one and three; and that reason is so obvious that the tiniest tot in the class can appreciate it. But why must B come between A and C? There is no natural advance, as in the case of the numerals. The letter B is not a little more than the letter A, nor a little less than the letter C. Except through the operation of the law of association, which only weaves its spell with the passing of the years, there is nothing about A to suggest B, and nothing about B to suggest C. The combination is a rope of sand. Robert Moffat only realized the insuperable character of this difficulty when he attempted to teach the natives of Bechuanaland the English alphabet. Each of his dusky pupils brought to the task an observation that had been trained in the wilds, a brain that had been developed by the years, and an intelligence that had been matured by experience. They were not babies. Yet the alphabet proved too much for them. Why should A be A? and why should B be B? and why should the one follow the other? Mr. Moffat was on the point of abandoning his educational enterprise as hopeless, when one thick-lipped and woolly-headed genius suggested that he should teach them to sing it! At first blush the notion seemed preposterous. There are some things which, like Magna Charta and minute-books, cannot be set to music. Robert Moffat, however, was a Scotsman. The tune most familiar to his childhood came singing itself over and over in his brain; by the most freakish and fantastic conjunction of ideas it associated itself with the problem that was baffling him; and, before that day's sun had set, he had his Bechuana pupils roaring the alphabet to the tune of Auld Lang Syne!

So ABC
D E F G
H I J K L M
NOPQ
RSTU
VWXYZ

The rhyme and metre fitted perfectly. The natives were so delighted that they strolled about the village shouting the new song at the tops of their voices; and Mr. Moffat declares that daylight was stealing through his bedroom window before the weird unearthly yells at last subsided. I have often wondered whether, in a more civilized environment, any attempt has been made to impress the letters upon the mind in the same way.

II
The symbolism of the alphabet rises to a sudden grandeur, however, when it is enlisted in the service of revelation. Long, long ago a startled shepherd was ordered to visit the court of the mightiest of earthly potentates, and to address him on matters of state in the name of the Most High. ` And the Lord said unto Moses, Come now, therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, and I will send thee also unto the children of Israel. And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I am come unto them and shall say, The God of your fathers bath sent me unto you, and they shall say, What is His name? what shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you!'
`I am—!'
`I am'—what?

For centuries and centuries that question stood unanswered; that sentence remained incomplete. It was a magnificent fragment. It stood like a monument that the sculptor had never lived to finish; like a poem that the poet, dying with his music in him, had left with its closing stanzas unsung. But the sculptor of that fragment was not dead; the singer of that song had not perished. For, behold, He liveth for evermore! And, in the fullness of time, He reappeared and filled in the gap that had so long stood blank.
`I am—!'
`I am'—what?
`I am—the Bread of Life!’ ‘I am—the Light of the World!' ‘I am—the Door!’ ‘I am—the True Vine!' 'I am—the Good Shepherd!' `I am—the Way, the Truth, and the Life!' `I am—the Resurrection and the Life!'

And when I come to the end of the Bible, to the last book of all, I find the series supplemented and completed.
`I am—Alpha and Omega!' `I am—A and Z!' `I am—the Alphabet!' The symbolism of which I have spoken can rise to no greater height than that. What, I wonder, can such symbolism symbolize? I take these birthday blocks that came to our house today and strew the letters on my study floor. So far as any spiritual significance is concerned, they seem as dead as the dry bones in Ezekiel's Valley. And yet `I am the Alphabet!' `Come,' I cry, with the prophet of the captivity, 'come from the Four Winds, O Breath, and breathe upon these slain that they may live! 'And the prayer has scarcely escaped my lips when lo, all the letters of the alphabet shine with a wondrous lustre and glow with a profound significance.

III
For see, the North Wind breathes upon these letters on the floor, and I see at once that they are symbols of the Inexhaustibility of Jesus! `I am Alpha and Omega!' `I am the Alphabet!' I have sometimes stood in one of our great public libraries. I have surveyed with astonishment the serried ranks of English literature. I have looked up, and, in tier above tier, gallery above gallery, shelf above shelf, the books climbed to the very roof, whilst, looking before me and behind me, they stretched as far as I could see. The catalogue containing the bare names of the books ran into several volumes. And yet the whole of this literature consists of these twenty-six letters on the floor arranged and rearranged in kaleidoscopic variety of juxtaposition. Which, I ask myself, is the greater—the literature or the alphabet? And I see at once that the alphabet is the greater because it is so inexhaustible. Literature is in its infancy. We shall produce greater poets than Shakespeare, greater novelists than Dickens, greater philosophers, historians, and humorists than any who have yet written. But they will draw upon the alphabet for every letter of every syllable of every word that they write. They may multiply our literature a million-million-fold; yet the alphabet will be as far from exhaustion when the last page is finished as it was before the first writer seized a pen.

`I am-the Alphabet!' He says. He means that He cannot be exhausted.

For the love of God is broader
Than the measures of Man's mind;
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.

The ages may draw upon His grace; the people of every nation and kindred and people and tongue—a multitude that no statistician can number—may kneel in contrition at His feet; His love is as great as His power and knows neither measure nor end. He is inexhaustible.

IV
And when the South Wind breathes upon these letters on the floor, I see at once that they are symbols of the Indispensability of Jesus. Literature, with all its hoarded wealth, is as inaccessible as the diamonds of the moon until I have mastered the alphabet. The alphabet is the golden key that unlocks to me all its treasures of knowledge, poetry, and romance.

`I am the Alphabet!' He says; and He says it three separate times. For the words occur thrice in the Apocalypse. In the first case they refer to the unfolding of the divine revelation ; in the second they refer to the interpretation of historic experience; and in the third they refer to the unveiled drama of the future. As the disciples discovered on the road to Emmaus, I cannot understand my Bible unless I take Him as being the key to it all; I cannot understand the processes of historical development until I have given Him the central place; I cannot anticipate with equanimity the unfoldings of the days to come until I have seen the keys of the eternities swinging at His girdle.

The alphabet is, essentially, an individual affair. In order to read a single sentence, I must learn it for myself. My father's intimacy with the alphabet does not help me to enjoy the volumes on my shelves. The alphabet is indispensable to me; and so is He! There is something very pathetic and very instructive about the story that Legh Richmond tells of The Young Cottager. 'The rays of the morning star,' Mr. Richmond says, `were not so beautiful in my sight as the spiritual lustre of this young Christian's character.' She was very ill when he visited her for the last time. `There was animation in her look—there was more—something like a foretaste of heaven seemed to be felt, and gave an inexpressible character of spiritual beauty, even in death.'

'Where is your hope, my child?' Mr. Richmond asked, in the course of that last conversation.

`Lifting up her finger,' he says, 'she pointed to heaven, and then directed the same finger downward to her own heart, saying successively as she did so, "Christ there!" and "Christ here!" These words, accompanied by the action, spoke her meaning more solemnly than can easily be conceived.'
In life and in death He is our one indispensability. In relation to this world, and in relation to the world that is to come, He stands to the soul as the alphabet stands in relation to literature.

V
And when the East Wind breathes upon these letters on the floor, I see at once that they are symbols of the Invincibility of Jesus. `I am—A and Z!' He is at the beginning, that is to say, and He goes right through to the end. There is nothing in the alphabet before A; there is nothing after Z. However far back your evolutionary interpretation of the universe may place the beginning of things, you will find Him there. However remote your interpretation of prophecy may make the end of things, you will find Him there. He goes right through. The story of the ages—past, present, and future—may be told in a sentence `Christ first, Christ last, and nought between but Christ.' Having begun, He completes. He is the Author and Finisher of our faith. He sets His face like a flint. Nothing daunts, deters, or dismays Him. `I am confident,' Paul says, `of this very thing, that He which hath begun a good work in you will perform it unto the end.' He never halts at H or L or P or X; He goes right through to Z. He never gives up.

VI
But the greatest comfort of all comes to me on the Wings, of the West Wind. For, when the West Wind breathes upon these letters on the floor, I see at once that they are symbols of the Adaptability of Jesus. The lover takes these twenty-six letters and makes them the vehicle for the expression of his passion; the poet transforms them into a song that shall be sung for centuries; the judge turns them into a sentence of death. In the hands of each they mould themselves to his necessity. The alphabet is the most fluid, the most accommodating, the most plastic, the most adaptable contrivance on the planet. Just because, in common with every person breathing, I possess a distinctive individuality, I sometimes feel as no person ever felt before, and I express myself in language such as no person ever used. And the beauty of the alphabet is that it adapts itself to my individual need. And that is precisely the beauty of Jesus. `I am—the Alphabet!' I may not have sinned more than others; but I have sinned differently. The experiences of others never sound convincing; they do not quite reflect my case. But, like the alphabet, He adapts Himself to every case. He is the very Saviour I need.

F W Boreham, ‘A Box of Blocks’, Rubble and Roseleaves (London: The Epworth Press, 1923), 236-248.

Boreham on Overcoming Handicaps

noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Pound) — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:08:00 +0000

When speaking of the difficulty which black young people experience in America in competing with their white rivals, Booker Washington tells us that his own pathetic and desperate struggle taught him that ‘success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed.’ There is a good deal in that.

I was once present at a meeting of a certain Borough Council, at which an engineer had to report on a certain proposal which the municipal authorities were discussing. The engineer contented himself with remarking that there were serious difficulties in the way of the execution of the plan. Whereupon the Mayor turned upon the unfortunate engineer and remarked, ‘We pay you your salary, Mr. Engineer, not to tell us that difficulties exist, but to show us how to surmount them!’ I thought it rather a severe rebuke at the time, but very often since, when I have been tempted to allow my handicaps to divert me from my duty, I have been glad that I heard the poor engineer censured.

F W Boreham, ‘The Handicap’, Mushrooms on the Moor (London: Charles H Kelly, 1915), 124-125.

Image: Booker T Washington.

Boreham on the Handicap

noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Pound) — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 12:05:00 +0000

It was a sunny autumn afternoon. The leaves were rustling about my feet, and the first nip of winter was in the air. It was Saturday, and I was out for a stroll. Suddenly a crowd attracted my attention, and, impelled by that curiosity which such a concourse invariably excites, I drew near to see whether it meant a fire or a fight. It was neither.

As I approached I caught sight of young fellows moving in and out among the people, wearing light many-coloured garments, and I guessed that a race was about to be run. Almost as soon as I arrived, the men were called up, arranged in a long line, and preparations made for the start. At a signal two or three of them sprang out from the line and bounded with an easy stride along the load. A few seconds later, three or four more followed; then others; until at last only one was left; and, after a brief period of further waiting, he also left the line and set out in pursuit. It was a handicap, Iwas told, and this man had started from scratch.

It was to be a long race, and it would be some time before any of the runners could be expected back again. The crowd, therefore, dispersed for the time being, breaking up into knots and groups, each of which strolled off to while away the waiting time as its own taste suggested. I turned into a lane that led up into the bush on the hillside, and, from that sheltered and sunny eminence, watched for the first sign of the returning runners.

Sitting there with nothing to do, it flashed upon me that the scene I had just witnessed was a reflection, as in a mirror, of all human experience and endeavour. Most people are heavily handicapped; it is no good blinking the fact. Ask a man to undertake some office or assume some responsibility in connexion with the church, and he will silence you at once with a narration of the difficulties that stand in his way. Ask a man to act on some board or committee for the management of some charitable or philanthropic enterprise, and he will explain to you that he has not a minute to spare. Ask a man to subscribe to some most necessary or deserving object, and he will tell you of the incessant demands to which he is subjected.

Now it is no good putting all this down to cant. We have no right to assume that these are merely the lame excuses of men who, in their secret souls, do not desire to assist us. We must not hastily hurl at them the curse that fell upon Meroz because it came not to the help of the Lord against the mighty. All that they say is perfectly true.

The difficulties that debar the first of these men from undertaking the work to which you are calling him are both real and formidable; the second man has every moment of his time fully occupied; the third man, because he is known to be generous, is badgered to death with collecting-lists from the first thing in the morning till the last thing at night. We must not judge these men too harshly. In the uncharitableness of our hearts we imagine that they have given us excuses which are not reasons. The fact is that they have done exactly the reverse; they have given us reasons which are not excuses.

We are on safer ground when we recognize frankly that it is very difficult for many people to devote much time, much energy, and much money to the kingdom of God. Many people are heavily handicapped.

F W Boreham, ‘The Handicap’ Mushrooms on the Moor (London: Charles H Kelly, 1915), 117-119.

Image: “It was to be a long race, and it would be some time before any of the runners could be expected back again.”

Boreham on Spurgeon and His Friendships

noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Pound) — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 15:57:00 +0000

F W Boreham wrote the following foreword (pages 15-18), for the book written by his friend, A. Cunningham Burley. This book was published by Epworth in 1933 and was entitled, Spurgeon and His Friendships.

Author Mr. Burley
A cablegram from the author of this volume invites me to add a FOREWORD. I have not seen the book; but Mr. Burley is one of my oldest friends, and I know of the lifelong and patient research which he has applied to his present theme. We are living in an age of specialists; and for many years Mr. Burley has specialized on Spurgeon. A rumour that some trifle had been unearthed that might conceivably throw a fresh speck of light on the monumental personality of C. H. Spurgeon has many a time led Mr. Burley to drop everything that he might speed hotfoot to test the nugget of which intelligence had reached him. His must often have been the disillusionment that comes to children who scamper off in search of the crock of gold at the rainbow's foot; but such disappointments have never quenched his passion; and, in the course of his tireless quest, he must have amassed a prodigious wealth of carefully-sifted and thoroughly reliable information—a hoard such as few biographers are happy enough to possess.

C. H. Spurgeon
The centenary of Mr. Spurgeon's birth calls challengingly for a work in which we shall be able to contemplate his subtle and permeating influence in its true historic perspective. His rugged individuality stands out boldly against a striking, dramatic and picturesque background.

During the latter half of the nineteenth century, English history took a surprising turn; the nation was made all over again. Its politics, its literature, its science, its commerce, its art, and, above all, its faith, were recast and refashioned; and the position of Great Britain among the world-powers assumed an entirely new character and importance.

Rise of Evangelism
In this renaissance Mr. Spurgeon played a conspicuous part; and he did it in two ways. He did it by creating a popular atmosphere for evangelism. This was his supreme triumph. In his famous Memoirs, Greville graphically describes Mr. Spurgeon—whose physique struck him as singularly reminiscent of Macaulay's—preaching, at an ordinary service, to nine thousand people. It impressed him, as it impressed all thoughtful observers, as an arresting and epoch-making phenomenon. It forced the evangelical pulpit into the glare of public attention. The world was compelled to take notice. It made thinkable and possible the work of all those ministers and evangelists who have since captured the attention of the populace. And when one attempts to estimate the spiritual, ethical and civic value of the impact of Mr. Spurgeon's flaming intensity upon each individual unit in the surging crowds that flocked every Sunday with wistful hearts to hear him, one realizes how generously and how vitally he contributed to the new order that sprang into being in his time.

Profound Influence
But Mr. Spurgeon had a second string to his bow. A great age produces great men, and, by the very men that it produces, is made greater. The annals of the Victorian era glitter, like a starry sky, with brilliant and illustrious names. There were giants in those days. But among those Homeric figures there was scarcely one upon whom Mr. Spurgeon did not exercise a profound and formative influence. I am thinking, not so much of those who were the direct fruitage of his far-reaching and regenerative ministry, but of men who moved in circles quite remote from that in which he shone and whose names were seldom or never mentioned in association with his. The leaders of all departments of British life and thought recognized that the spirit of Spurgeon represented the life-force of the ages. He magnetized and sometimes electrified them. They went to hear him; they sought his counsel; and they struggled to keep the movements that they directed in harmony with the atmosphere that he generated. The most skilful and penetrating historians will find it beyond their wit to account in so many words for Mr. Spurgeon's authority over the minds of the men who dominated his period. But the most cursory review of the history of the nineteenth century must convince any man that his sway was stupendous. A king-maker occupies a more exalted eminence than a king. And in that age of crisis and of transformation there were many kingly spirits who gratefully confessed that, but for Mr. Spurgeon's ministry—in public or in private—their own contribution to the development would have been negligible.

Massive Theme
This is stating an obvious fact in nebulous and abstract terms. Mr. Burley's pages will, I am certain, abound in vivid and telling narratives that will provide concrete vindication of this general principle. He has a massive theme; his whole heart is in his work; his able contributions to current journalism have proved that his pen is eminently capable of the honourable task to which he now aspires; and I welcome this opportunity of breathing an affectionate benediction on his venture.

F W Boreham
KEW.,
VICTORIA,
AUSTRALIA, June, 1933.

Thanks: I am grateful to Pastor Jeff Cranston for suggesting this good post so that lovers of Boreham’s writings might enjoy this foreword. Sincere thanks to Jeff’s assistant, Lynn Swanson for scanning and sending this article.

Dr. Geoff Pound

Image: C. H. Spurgeon.

Boreham Books into Chinese

noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Pound) — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 08:13:00 +0000

Some avid readers of this site may remember me writing about the future of Boreham publishing and saying that it would be good to get the works of F W Boreham into Chinese.

In April 2007 in a posting entitled, ‘Geoff Pound Speaks About Publishing Boreham Books’, I said:

“I am discovering that some readers of the Boreham Blog site are from China and I am waiting for someone from the Chinese speaking world to put their hands up and work with us on translating and publishing Boreham books into Mandarin or Cantonese.”

Following that posting I had one sound out that didn’t go anywhere but in recent weeks I have had a phone call from a Mandarin and English speaker who works as an interpreter and translator and he is passionate about translating FWB into Mandarin!

I met with him recently to talk about this venture. He is very self-effacing and does not want any publicity or fanfare. Already he has translated six essays as he is translating the forthcoming book (in English), The Best Essays and Sermons of F W Boreham.

He is commencing an F W Boreham Blog in Mandarin on which he will post stories from “All the Blessings of Life” to introduce Boreham to the Chinese world and to generate interest in Boreham books that will later be published in the traditional (not online) method.

This man has read about 10 of the Boreham books and is looking to purchase more (anyone got any spares?)

I asked him how he is finding the challenge of translating Boreham into Mandarin. He said: “It won’t be hard to translate Boreham. Mandarin is a very poetic and pictorial language and these are words that describe well the Boreham books that I have read.”

I will keep you posted on these developments especially for people who would like to write to Chinese-speaking friends and point them in the direction of the Boreham Blog in Chinese.

If you have any words or ways with which you would like to encourage this man, do write to me and I will be glad to forward them to him.

Dr. Geoff Pound

Image: The Lord’s Prayer