I recently completed a series of posts on the life of the top selling Australian author of all time—F. W. Boreham. I wanted to help you get a feel for this guy and get hooked on his writing! If you did, you might be interested in getting a copy of some of his books.

In this post, I’ve compiled a list of resources on the life of F. W. Boreham. It is by no means exhaustive. I’ve relied on Amazon.com as my primary source, but publishers are provided so that books can be tracked down through other websites or at your local bookstore.

I commend these works to you.

Grace to you.

InFocus posts

F. W. Boreham
F. W. Boreham: The Great Christian Essayist
On Frightening Timothy
Spurgeon’s Text
The Minor Minor Prophets
The Empty Crib

Social Media

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Websites

The Official F. W. Boreham Blog
John Broadbanks Publishing
Link-Zone on F. W. Boreham
This Day with F. W. Boreham
New F. W. Boreham Books Blog
Finding Truth Matters on F. W. Boreham

F. W. Boreham books currently in print

A Bunch of Everlastings (BiblioLife) – Amazon
A Frank Boreham Treasury (Moody Press) – Amazon
A Handful of Stars: Texts That Have Moved Great Minds (Dodo Press) – Amazon, A&R
A Packet of Surprises: The Best Essays and Sermons of F. W. Boreham (John Broadbanks Publishing) – Amazon
A Pathway of Roses (Emerald House) – Amazon
All the Blessings of Life: The Best Stories of F. W. Boreham, 2nd Edition) (John Broadbanks Publishing) – Amazon, CBD
Angels, Palms and Fragrant Flowers: F. W. Boreham on C. H. Spurgeon (John Broadbanks Publishing) – Amazon
Faces in the Fire: And Other Fancies (Kessinger Publishing) – A&R
In Pastures Green (John Broadbanks Publishing) – Amazon
Loose Leaves (John Broadbank Publishing) – Amazon
Lover of Life: F. W. Boreham’s Tribute to His Mentor, Revised and Expanded (John Broadbanks Publishing) – Amazon, CBD
Mountains in the Mist (Kregel Publications) – Amazon
Mushrooms on the Moor (Dodo Press) – Amazon, A&R
Second Thoughts (John Broadbanks Publishing) – Amazon
The Chalice of Life (John Broadbanks Publishing) – Amazon
The Heavenly Octave (Kessinger Publishing) – Amazon, A&R
The Home of the Echoes (Kessinger Publishing) – A&R
The Luggage of Life (Book Jungle) – Amazon, A&R

Biographies of F. W. Boreham

The Other Side of the Hill and Back Again (Boreham) – A&R

Books which include portions on/from F. W. Boreham

50 People Every Christian Should Know: Learning from Spiritual Giants of the Faith (Warren Wiersbe, Baker Books) – Amazon
Sermons on John 3:16 (Various, Emerald House) – Amazon
On Faith and Doubt (Warren Wiersbe, CBD) – CBD

eBooks

See Amazon for a long list of Kindle books. Some of them are free.
Smashwords has a few Boreham titles.
Google books has a large range of Boreham books available.
Logos Bible Software now has some of Boreham’s works available.

Second hand books by F. W. Boreham

See Amazon for a long list of second hand Boreham books.
Also, try ebay for a nice selection of books.
Christian Books Australia is another brilliant source of Boreham books.
Your local second hand book store.

The often quoted verse is ..  blessed is he whose quiver is full.     In Christian pop culture, the pressure is on.   Through their reality TV show, the Duggars have communicated their version of family life – and it is large.   While I appreciate some of the principles that large families espouse, we should be deliberate in how we filter some of those messages.

On the other side of the equation, our society has uplift the status of the deliberately barren.   Whether it be financial pressures or simply the desire for more time for selfish pursuits, the choice to remain single and build a career is growing.

An Australian politician once famously but accurately said that the west was aborting itself into non-existence.    The average birth rate in ‘Christian’ Italy is 1.6 children per woman, while ‘Islamic’ Yemen’s average birth rate is 7.3 children per woman.   Even a simply mathematician can extrapolate where these trends will lead.   If part of the purpose of having children is to share the gospel with future generations, then we are failing greatly.

While the Bible does not say how many children we should have, the command to multiply and fill the earth is still in force.   Continuing to ignore this will result in great changes.   So what do you think?   Should we be trying to have large families?

Blessings

- JC

Today marks ten years since that fateful day. Six years ago today, I published my experience of 9/11. A portion follows here:

September 11, 2001, 9.55 am: I walk into my Biblical Foundations class at university and overhear a classmate saying something about a terrorist strike. I also hear something about the World Trade Centre towers falling. People shouldn’t joke about things like that. Imagine what that would be like, a skyscraper falling… just over an hour later I stand watching the news in the huge university amphitorium. The vivid, big-screen flashes of terror will never leave my mind.

Less than six weeks later I stand at ground zero, looking on in disbelief at a scene of utter destruction. There is no way to completely explain the atmosphere at ground zero, but a mixture of sorrow and horror is obvious on every face. The choking smoke mingles with the smell of rotting flesh. My eyes are stinging from the debris-choked air and all around I see nothing but pain. Every free surface is pasted with posters seeking information on missing loved-ones. Though there are thousands of people in sight, the atmosphere is quiet, contemplative, solemn.

As I peruse my photographs from that trip to Ground Zero ten years on, several stand out. In one, an Australian flag is strewn among the candles and flowers that cover the footpaths—an appropriate memorial to the ten Australians that died on 9/11 and a reminder that this attack was not against America merely, but against the western ideals that we hold dear.

In another, I’m standing next to Ground Zero underneath the sign for Fulton St. The significance of this is that my pastor at the time, John Vaughn, had been to Ground Zero a few weeks earlier and had pointed out that Ground Zero was right next to Fulton St. of the Fulton Street Revival. It was our prayer at the time that God would use 9/11 to bring similar revival.

It’s hard to believe it’s been ten years. With the benefit of time between then and now, let me share a few reflections:

• Terrorism is evil. It is the lowest form of cowardice.
• What happened that day was the beginning of a new level of Islamic aggression against the “Christian” west. The Muslims can be forgiven for mistaking the west as Christian since much of the west mistakes itself for Christian. Now, more than ever, we need to be clear about what it does and does not mean to be Christian. That said, if the Muslim fundamentalists had a more accurate view of the west as Secularist, they would still attack the west because the real issue is that the west is not Muslim—at least not yet.
• One of the most significant decisions coming out of 9/11 was the US White House decision to present this as an extremist problem rather than a problem with Islam itself. The White House made a concerted effort to affirm that Islam is not inherently extremist. This was a war on terror, not a war on Islam. Yet ten years later the war drags on. One has to ask the question, was this premise more expedient than accurate?
• We’ve now been at war for ten years. We’ve lost 29 diggers in the fight against terrorism. That’s less than a third of the 110 civilians we’ve lost to terrorism since 9/11. Was it right to go to war? Is it right to stay? Can the war be won? I wish I knew for sure.
• There is a sense in which we have already won the war on terror. What I mean is that you have probably never been substantially afraid of being blown up while shopping or driving or walking. When you send your kids to school, you probably don’t wonder if they’ll make it home safe. We basically live in safety. And regardless of the answers to the questions in the previous point, we owe that to our soldiers and the soldiers of other nations who put their lives on the line every day to keep Australia safe. We owe them gratitude and respect.
• 9/11 didn’t lead to a widespread revival of Christian faith. Certainly God worked through it in many lives, but there was no sustained growth in church attendance or reports of sweeping revival. Perhaps revival is not dependent on sensational world events. Perhaps we should be preaching Christ just as fervently now as we did just after the attacks. Perhaps God will send the increase when he chooses.

That’s enough of that. But I hope you’ll take some time today to reflect; to go to “the house of mourning” and “lay it to heart” (Eccl. 7:2).

God doesn’t owe us safety. Safety is a gracious trust from him to be used for his glory. And when safety is unsure, we are reminded that the world we live in is broken by sin—Adam’s sin and our sin. And we can remember that our greatest need for refuge is for refuge from God’s wrath. And we can remember that we have such refuge in Jesus Christ because he took God’s wrath for us!

We can rest and rejoice in that.

Grace to you.

It was on the lawn in front of the Silverstream Manse that I lost my faith in the unimpeachable excellence of cleanliness. Cleanliness is a good thing; but, like most good things, it can be overdone.

We were lounging under the shade of a giant elm—Sidwell, Clive Hislop, John Broadbanks and I. We had survived, without much trouble, the tedium of a committee meeting, for, on this occasion, the dreariness of resolutions and amendments had been tempered to us by the idyllic conditions under which we met. To keep in line with tradition, the meeting should have been held in a dingy classroom in the city; but John Broadbanks, who had a genius for making drudgery delightful, upset the usual procedure.

‘There are only four of us on the committee,’ he wrote to the secretary. ‘Why should we all go to town to bore each other to death in a stuffy old classroom? Come out to Silverstream; we can have the meeting on the lawn; you can bring your pipes; and we’ll have some afternoon tea to keep us from falling asleep over the business.’

It was so arranged. We quickly reached the end of the agenda, and John slipped off to arrange for the afternoon tea. On his return to the group, he was attended by little Don. Don had an exercise-book in his hand and wanted his father to set him a copy. Taking his fountain-pen from his vest-pocket, John wrote across the top of the page in his best copper-plate, the words: Cleanliness is next to Godliness. And Don, advised by his mother to get some irksome tasks out of the way as quickly as possible, scampered off to copy it at once.

‘That’s wholesome doctrine for a growing boy!’ remarked Hislop, smilingly, as he watched Don’s retreating form.

‘Oh yes,’ laughed John, ‘it’s a proverb; and, somehow, proverbs seemed to be made to be inscribed on the pages of copy-books. But, like most proverbs, it’s more epigrammatic than true. It’s good as far as it goes; but the trouble is, it doesn’t go far. The Bible itself warns us, you know, against making a fetish of cleanliness. But, I say!’ He exclaimed, with sudden enthusiasm, ‘if you fellows have not yet chosen your text for Sunday, I can recommend that one: Where no oxen are the crib is clean. That’s the other side of the proverb that I wrote in Don’s copy-book. It’s a very important side, too!’

But, at that moment, he was interrupted by the arrival of his wife with the afternoon tea.

‘Sermonizing again!’ exclaimed Lillian, turning playfully upon him. Do you think these ministers want you to talk texts to them all the afternoon?’

‘Indeed, it was a very good text that I was giving them,’ replied John, in self defense. ‘It was the text that I often quote to you, my lady, when you scold me about the untidiness of my study. As I often impress upon you,’ he said, taking the cups from her tray in order to hand them to us, ‘it would be very easy to keep the study tidy if I never went into it. Where no oxen are the crib is clean. They’re all going to preach on that text next Sunday: I can see the light of an inspiration coming into Sidwell’s face.They’ll have a great sermon on The Empty Crib at Balclutha on Sunday; you mark my words!’

Cleanliness is next to Godliness, says the proverb that John Broadbanks inscribed so boldly in his boy’s copy-book. It sometimes is. And sometimes, on the contrary, it is as far from godliness as pole is from pole. Cleanliness is often a blessing; but it is often a curse. In the fourth chapter of his terrible prophecy, Amos tells of the horrors that the Most High has sent upon his reprobate nation in hope of leading them to repentance. ‘I have sent unto you war and pestilence and famine, yet have ye not returned unto Me, saith the Lord. And I also have given you cleanness of teeth in all your cities, and want of bread in all your houses, yet have ye not returned unto Me, saith the Lord.’

Cleanness of teeth! The cleanliness that is not a blessing but a curse, and a curse most terrible! I know a man whose ledger is spotlessly clean: his business is a failure! I know a woman whose nursery is hushed and neat: her child is dead! I know a carpenter on whose workshop floor there is no litter of shavings: he is taken to drink, and never goes near his bench! In each case it is because there are no oxen that the crib is clean. The cleanliness is the cleanliness of stagnation; the cleanliness of inactivity; the cleanliness of death.

Like everything else, cleanliness may be purchased at too high a price. The grocer cannot afford the clean ledger; the barrister cannot afford a tidy office; the farmer cannot afford the clean but empty stall. Herein lies the weakness of monasticism. I may prevent the dust and defilement of the world from settling on my soul by imprisoning myself in a cloister. But, separated from the world, I can no longer serve the world. I have stultified and disqualified myself. I have rendered it impossible for me to do the work that I was sent into the world to do. It is better for me to enter into the hurly-burly and to do my work, even though my soul gets somewhat dusty in the doing of it. …

The empty crib saves the farmer a lot of trouble; but, on the whole, it would be better for him if it were occupied by oxen and needed constant cleansing and attention. He has a clean crib, it is true; but, on the other hand, he has no oxen with which to plough, and his farm must go to rack and ruin. The same principle holds true of the easy conscience and the complacent soul. Where no oxen are the crib is clean, and, where no illumination is, the conscience is clean also. An uninstructed conscience may be coaxed into approving of any enormity. Every crime in the calendar has at some time or other been committed by a man whose conscience applauded the deed.

The atmosphere of the dining-room looks perfectly free of dust until a shaft of light suddenly shines across it, and then, in that luminous line, a million specks are seen to be dancing. It is a parable. When there was no divine work going forward in the heart of Job, he talked all day long of his integrity and charity; but, when a spiritual illumination broke upon him, he abhorred himself and repented in dust and ashes. Before Paul caught the vision on the road to Damascus, his soul was like an empty crib. Nothing was going on there. And, as a consequence, he was a Pharisee of the Pharisees, proud and perfectly content. But when there began in his soul that wondrous work that transfigured him and, through him, shook the world, he cried out of the bitterness of his spirit that of sinners he was chief.

Let every minister be thankful that his study needs tidying; let every barrister be thankful for the bustle and confusion of his office; let every carpenter be thankful for the heap of shavings on the floor; let every mother be thankful for the tumult in the nursery; let every farmer be thankful for the crib that needs cleaning out! It shows that there’s something doing. In exactly the same way, let every man be thankful when his conscience cries out against him; the evil day is the day on which conscience resolves to speak no more. And, above all, let every man be thankful at having discovered the defilement and contamination of his own soul. As with the defilement in the farmer’s stall, it is a sign of life. We have all heard of the visitor who, inspecting a little country cemetery, pitied the ill-health of the grave-digger. ‘You’ve a terrible cough!’ he said. ‘Umph,’ retorted the old man; ‘but there’s plenty here’—pointing to the tombs—‘would be very glad o’ my cough!’ That is so.The cough is a sign of life; but, for all that, the cough must be cured or it will drag the old man down to his grave. The sight of the dirty crib is a healthy sight, but it is at the same time a call for cleansing. The torments of an aroused conscience, and the recognition of inward pollution, are symptoms of spiritual vitality for which a wise man will give thanks on bended knees; but they are useless and worse than useless unless they drive him, in his desperation, to the fountain opened for all sin and for all uncleanness.

Taken from The Crystal Pointers, pp. 175-186.

It was the deliberate opinion of Charley Bates, the pickpocket, that Bill Sikes’ dog was ‘an out-and-out Christian.’

‘He wouldn’t so much as bark in a witness-box for fear of committing himself; no, not if you tied him up in one, and left him there without wittles for a fortnight,’ added the Artful Dodger.

‘He’s an out-and-out Christian,’ said Charley.

I do not quite understand why I have begun this chapter with Bill Sikes’ dog. I meant to have written about Balaam’s ass. I must apologize to my readers for having introduced the wrong animal. But now that we have Bill Sikes’ dog here, we may as well have a good look at him. For there is a distinct connexion between the two after all; and, personally, I always find it more easy to understand the record of the wayward prophet and his eloquent beast when I think of it with the story of Bill Sikes and his dog open before me.

“Yes, he’s an out-and-out Christian!” said Charley.

I’m inclined to go one step further than did Charley. I propose to establish a new order, to be called The Minor Minor Prophets. And among those Minor Minor Prophets both Balaam’s ass and Sikes’ dog will find honourable places.

Principal George Adam Smith, of Aberdeen—our greatest living authority on Hebrew prophecy—says that the two indispensable qualifications of a prophet are Vision and Voice. Your prophet sees what others cannot see, and therefore he says what others cannot say. Now, these are precisely the features about these Minor Minor Prophets that impress me most. Their vision is positively uncanny, and they say things unutterable. Balaam’s ass is by no means alone in that respect.

I do not keep a dog. It is too humiliating. A man cannot possibly enjoy the companionship of a dog and maintain his self-respect. Walk along a country road with a dog, and he will discover, and draw your attention to, a hundred things to which you are totally blind. Every broken stick, every mark in the mud, every scratch in the sand, every gap in the hedge, every fluttering leaf, mean something to the dog. It is his way of reading history. He knows exactly what has happened, and what is happening now, and what is going to happen. A wonderful seer is he. It is positively painful. He makes his owner feel like a dolt and dullard. It is the story of Balaam over again. The ass saw the angel, but Balaam didn’t. Any man who keeps a dog, or a horse, or a Minor Minor Prophet of any kind knows that this sort of thing happens very often.

Travellers tell us that a horse or a donkey is never deceived by a mirage. And just because these Minor Minor Prophets see so much more than we can see, they say so much more than we can say. I have never been able to sympathize with those who find a difficulty in the eloquence of Balaam’s ass. When I was a child I pored over Aesop’s fables, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world to me that the wolves and foxes, the dogs and the horses, the storks and the cranes, should speak to each other and to men. I do not remember ever pausing to think about it; it seemed so perfectly and exquisitely fitting and right. Then followed that silly and superior stage in which we doubt everything that we had ever believed. And during that period I, of course, turned up my nose contemptuously at my childish simplicity, and assured myself that was all nonsense. How could animals speak? The idea was preposterous. Then came wisdom, or, at least, an inkling of it. I remembered that the history of the world was crammed with just such stories as the story of Balaam’s ass. Did not geese call up the slumbering Roman guards and save the capitol? Did not a spaniel cry aloud and spare not—after the fashion of a major prophet—until he had saved a nation from disgrace? The Prince of Orange and all his sentries slept. The Spanish soldiers were within striking distance. And in that moment of imminent peril, on which the destinies of nations trembled, the Prince’s spaniel spake out bravely. ‘To his dying day,’ says Motley, ‘the Prince ever afterwards kept a spaniel of the same race in his bed-chamber.’ I came, too, upon Luther’s tribute to his robin. ‘I have one preacher,’ he says, ‘that I love better than any other upon earth; it is my little tame robin, which preaches to me daily. I put his crumbs upon my window-sill, especially at night. He hops on to the sill when he wants his supply, and takes as much as he desires to satisfy his need. From thence, he always hops on to a little tree close by, and lifts up his voice to God and sings his carol of praise and gratitude, tucks his little head under his wing, and goes fast to sleep, and leaves to-morrow to look after itself. He is the best preacher that I have on earth.’ And then, my scepticism almost gone, and my mind swinging rapidly back to my childhood’s faith, I came upon Bill Sikes’ dog. How reproachfully he used to look up into the burglar’s face! Tell me that these Minor Minor Prophets cannot speak! Call them ‘dumb creatures’! I have heard a dog say more in two seconds than I could express in two minutes or write in two pages! Does not a pointer say more than a parrot? To be sure! These creatures are no more dumb than Balaam’s ass. Like him, they are Minor Minor Prophets. They have Vision and they have Voice. If we think them dumb, it is because we ourselves are deaf; that is all.

Yes, they have Voice. And no man who has heard these Minor Minor Prophets can afford to ignore their message. Let me give one startling and tremendous illustration. I sometimes think it the most sensational thing in literature. A hundred years ago there took place Napoleon’s historic and memorable retreat from Moscow. Among those frozen mountain passes, and along those deep and shadowy valleys in which the drifted snow had buried the very pine-trees, Napoleon strewed the corpses of half a million men. It is the most stupendous tragedy that the history of the world can produce. Did no prophet rise up in those days to warn the Emperor that his invasion of Russia would be attended by so enormous and appalling a catastrophe? There were prophets to warn him! God never lets any man, much less half a million men, rush to his dreadful doom without sending some prophet to warn and deliver him. He sent Minor Minor Prophets. Listen! Frank Buckland, the great naturalist, who knew the Minor Minor Prophets thoroughly, says: ‘If the Emperor Napoleon, when on the road to Moscow, had condescended to observe the flights of storks and cranes passing over his fated battalions, subsequent events in the politics of Europe might have been very different. These storks and cranes knew of the coming on of a great and terrible winter; the birds hastened towards the south, but Napoleon and his huge army pressed on northwards.’ And we Australians remember gratefully the pigeon that, up in the dusty heart of the continent, showed Captain Sturt where the water was, and saved the life of the greatest of all our explorers. We gladly welcome that gentle bird, and it’s keen vision and it’s soft voice, to the goodly fellowship of the Minor Minor Prophets.

Balaam thrashed the ass, and Bill Sikes kicked the dog. That is always the fate of the prophets, even the Minor Minor Prophets. Indeed, it was not owing to the virtue of either Balaam or Bill Sikes that the ass or the dog—poor Minor Minor Prophets—did not fare even worse. ‘Balaam said onto the ass: I would there were a sword in mine hand, for now would I kill thee!’ And Bill Sikes did actually prepare to drown the dog; had the stone and the string in the water already; but the dog—having a prophetic gift on which the burglar had not reckoned—mysteriously vanished. We are born persecutors. It comes quite naturally to us to stone the prophets. It is very absurd. We might just as well smash the mirror if it dares to suggest that we are not as handsome as Apollo or as beautiful as Venus! But absurd and illogical as it all is, we do it. We’re like Macaulay’s Hindu who, seeing the sacred water of the Ganges under a microscope, smashed the microscope! And so poor Balaam thrashed his ass, and longed to slay him! And so poor Bill Sikes kicked his dog, and tried to drown him! And so—and on precisely identical principles—all your persecutions have been inaugurated. Those roaring lions at Rome, that hideous inquisition in Spain, those blazing fires at Smithfield—it is the same sad and silly old story, over and over and over again.

There was a Prophet once, the peerless Prince of all the prophets. And all the prophets of all the ages reverently salute Him. He had Vision such as no prophet, before or since, ever enjoyed. And Voice; for it was like the sound of many waters. Beneath the magic of His utterance wicked men winced and weeping women were wondrously comforted. But they crucified Him! His path led to the Cross. It reached its climax on Calvary. That is always the way. The Prince of the prophets, and the major prophets, and the minor prophets, and even the minor minor prophets must all pay that same dread penalty for Truth’s dear sake. And I for my part am face to face with a terrible choice. Shall I take my stand with those noble souls—prophets and heroes and martyrs—who have seen clearly and spoken truly, come what may? Or shall I be found skulking among those who wince beneath the word, slash savagely at the faithful speaker, and stagger blindly out into the dark?

‘He’s an out-and-out Christian!’ said Charley Bates, that pickpocket, as he discussed Bill Sikes’ dog with his friend, the Artful Dodger. His bald and dogmatic affirmation may be open to theological criticism; but I am in no mood at this moment to take up the cudgels against him.

Taken from Mountains in the Mist, pp. 30-37.

It’s was the first Sunday of the New Year, and this was how it opened! On roads and footpaths the snow was already many inches deep; the fields were a sheet of blinding whiteness; and the flakes were still falling as though they never meant to stop. As the caretaker fought his way through the storm from his cottage to the chapel in Artillery Street, he wondered whether, on such a wild and wintry day, any one would venture out.  It would be strange if, on the very first Sunday morning of the year, there should be no service.  He unbolted the chapel doors and lit the furnace under the stove.  Half an hour later, two men were seen bravely trudging their way through the snow drifts; and, as they stood on the chapel steps, their faces flushed with their recent exertions, they laughingly shook the snow off their hats and overcoats.  What a morning, to be sure!  By eleven o’clock about a dozen others had arrived; but where was the minister?  They waited; but he did not come.  He lived at a distance, and, in all probability, had found the roads impassable.  What was to be done?  The stewards looked at each other and surveyed the congregation.  Except for a boy of fifteen sitting under the gallery, every face was known to them, and the range of selection was not great.  There were whisperings and hasty consultations, and at last one of the two men were first to arrive—‘a poor, thin-looking man, a shoe maker, a tailor, or something of that sort’— yielded to the murmured entreaties of the others and mounted the pulpit steps. He glanced nervously round upon nearly three hundred empty seats. Nearly, but not quite! For there were a dozen or fifteen of the regular worshipers present, and there was the boy sitting under the gallery. People who had braved such a morning deserved all the help that he could give them, and the strange boy under the gallery ought not to be sent back into the storm feeling that there was nothing in the service for him. And so the preacher determined to make the most of his opportunity; and he did.

The boy sitting under the gallery! A marble tablet now adorns the wall near the seat which he occupied that snowy day. The inscription records that, that very morning, the boy sitting under the gallery was converted! He was only fifteen, and he died at fifty-seven. But, in the course of the intervening years, he preached the gospel to millions and led thousands and thousands into the kingdom and service of Jesus Christ. ‘Let preachers study this story!’ says Sir William Robertson Nicoll. ‘Let them believe that, under the most adverse circumstances, they may do a work that will tell on the universe for ever. It was a great thing to have converted Charles Haddon Spurgeon; and who knows but he may have in the smallest and humblest congregation in the world some lad as well worth converting as was he?’

—Taken from A Bunch of Everlastings, pp. 143-145.

It is an evil thing and a bitter to frighten Timothy. And it is woefully easy to do. Timothy is very young. He always was! He always will be! Timothy has solved the problem of perpetual youth. He will never grow old. He was very young when he went up to Corinth that first time. Paul felt sorry for him. He was such a boy. “If Timothy come,” the wise old man wrote to those Corinthian Christians, anticipating their amazement as they beheld the boyish ambassador, “if Timothy come, see that he be with you without fear. Let no man despise him.” And ten years later poor Timothy is still in trouble about this perennial juvenility. “Let no man despise thy youth,” Paul writes again in this later letter. It is very beautiful. The boyishness of Timothy is chronic, inveterate, incurable. He simply won’t grow old.  He was very young when Paul sent him to Corinth.  He was still blushing over his boyish bearing when the veteran addressed to him his last pathetic letter. And he was still young when I myself met him. And just because there are still so many Corinthians who despise poor Timothy’s youth, it is still necessary for Paul to beg and entreat those thoughtless believers not to frighten Timothy. “If Timothy come, see that he be with you without fear.”

“If Timothy come,” says Paul. And Timothy often comes. I met him once as a young convert, setting himself with great hesitation, and with much trembling, to the high and holy enterprise of local preaching. I met him again as a young home missionary, encountering insuperable obstacles in his large and lonely district in the Never-Never Country, yet not half as much afraid of the muddy roads and impassable fords as of the peril of unfaithfulness among his scattered people. I met him again as a student pastor, burdening himself, after the heavy scholastic toils of the week, with the spiritual oversight of a pastorless congregation on the Lord’s Day. And I met him once as a young minister, fresh from college, pulling himself together after the solemn and searching ordeal of his instruction, and wondering who, among the saints or angels, was sufficient for these dreadful things. Poor Timothy! Paul felt very sorry for him. So did I. “If Timothy come, see that he be with you without fear.” Timothy is very shy, very sensitive, very timid. At least, so all the commentators say, and if they don’t know, who should? Yes, I feel sure that they’re right. It is impossible to read of Paul’s tender solicitude for Timothy without being driven to the conclusion. Timothy is very shy, and very sensitive, and very timid. All the most winsome and most lovable things are. The birds on the bough, the rabbits in their burrow, the deer in the forest glades—all the feathered and furry creatures to which we feel irresistibly and instinctively drawn—are shy, and timid, and shrinking. And so was Timothy. “If Timothy come, see that he be with you without fear.”

Some day, when I have a Sunday to spare, I mean to run down to that bush congregation, to that country pastorate, to that suburban out-station, at which Timothy usually preaches. I should like to have a quiet talk with the people about this matter of frightening Timothy. I cannot persuade myself that they fully recognize the gracious opportunity which Timothy’s presence offers to them. It may be theirs to foster, and cherish, and nurture in him all that is most spiritual, and tender, and noble, and Christlike; and to send him forth at last from their tearful farewell meeting, not only with a silver-mounted umbrella or a Gladstone bag, but with a spirit sweetened, and instructed, and enriched in preparation for a great and fruitful ministry. Nor do I feel quite sure that they recognize the weight to their responsibility. They may quite easily and innocently spoil Timothy. They may frighten him out of all that is best in him. And they may dispatch him at last from their farewell meeting with a very beautiful silver-mounted umbrella, or a very handsome Gladstone bag—and with nothing else. And neither a silver-mounted umbrella nor a Gladstone bag is quite adequate preparation for the Christian ministry in strenuous days like these.

It is a dreadful thing to frighten Timothy out of his dreams, his ambitions, his ideals. He always has them. There is nothing else to attract him into the ministry. It is perfectly safe to assume that when Timothy boards the train that will bear him to his country pastorate, his head is full of the most beautiful ideas as to what a Christian minister should be. He has been reading Richard Baxter, or William Law, or Alexander Whyte, or the Yale lectures. Or at least he has been reading his Bible, and feels it a fearful thing to be called to follow in the footsteps of the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament preachers. And he has prayed until his face has shone that he may show himself worthy of so solemn and sacred a charge. And all his thinking and dreaming and talking and reading and praying have enlarged his heart, and inflamed his emotions, and heightened his ambitions. And with all this wealth of spiritual fervour surging, like a tumult of flood-water, through every fibre of his being, he sets his face for his mission district or student pastorate. And when Paul sees him setting out in this temper, he trembles for him. Such a spirit is very fragile. It would be so easy for those thoughtless but well-meaning people at Corinth to frighten it all out of him. “If Timothy come, see that he be with you without fear.” …

Ian MacLaren has a lovely story of John Carmichael that I somehow think would have been very much to Paul’s taste as he thought of Timothy and his peril at Corinth. Now, Carmichael was like Timothy, very young, very shy, very sensitive, and very shrinking. He entered upon his first charge. But he felt—painfully, acutely, constantly—the awful chasm that yawned between his radiant dreams and his actual achievements. And he felt that the people must be regarding him either with pity or contempt. One Sabbath, as he was sitting in the vestry, all the elders filed solemnly in. He felt that they had come to tell him that they could tolerate it no longer. Then the sagest and kindliest of them all addressed him. They had noticed his fearfulness, and nervousness, and timidity, and wished him to be completely at his ease. Was he not among his own people? They would have Timothy among them without fear. “You’re never to be troubled in the pulpit,” the old man went on, “or be thinking about anything but the word of the Lord and the souls of the people, of which you are the shepherd. We will ask you to remember, when you stand in your place to speak to us in the name of the Lord, that as the smoke goeth up from the homes of the people in the morning, so will their prayers be ascending for their minister, and as you look down upon us before you begin to speak, maybe you will say to yourself, next Sabbath, ‘They are all loving me.’ Oh, yes, and it will be true from the oldest to the youngest, we will all be loving you very much.” “And that,” Ian McLaren says, “that is why John Carmichael remained in the ministry of Jesus Christ, the most patient and mindful of ministers.” And I, for one, can easily believe it.

—Taken from Mountains in the Mist (1914), pp. 21-29.

Perhaps the most unrecognised writer within all of Christendom is the little known, but widely read, Frank William (F. W.) Boreham. Despite being unknown to most Australians he is still the best selling Australian author of all time with many of his books going into as many as 24 reprint editions!

Today his books are collector’s items selling for around $500 each, and even up to $1000. They are now mostly available from the U.K. and U.S.A. And little wonder. When introduced to an assembly of Presbyterian Pastors in Scotland in 1936, he was introduced with:

“The man whose name is on all our lips, whose books are on our shelves, and whose illustrations are in all our sermons.”

Frank Boreham wrote some 55 books and more than 3,000 editorials for the Hobart Mercury and The Melbourne Age. He was a master story teller and showed better than any other Christian author that God could be relevant in ways never before considered. Among the classics of Christian-must-read literature, including Pilgrim’s Progress, The Imitation of Christ, Practicing The Presence of God, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, The Chronicles of Narnia, is now considered Boreham’s “A Bunch of Everlastings”. People have literally died clutching that book to their chests as they drew some last moments of comfort from the words Boreham had masterfully penned. I would rate this book as the one of the best books I have ever read. I now own several copies of this book which I selectively share with those who enquire about my fascination with Boreham’s writings. If you want a copy of this book you’ll have to look in antiquarian or second hand bookstores as it hasn’t been published since the 1950′s (it was first published around 1916). You should expect to pay up to $40 a copy (depending on the edition). But for some of Boreham’s other, and now rarer, books you can expect to pay up to $500 and even up to $1000 for the rarest editions! Yet this former pastor of the Hobart Baptist Church is hardly known in his adopted countries of Australia and New Zealand.

F. W. Boreham’s birth

Frank Boreham was the eldest son in a large family. Frank Boreham was born in England in 1871. He was particularly blessed with amazing parents. His father seemed to Frank to be the most inquisitive man on earth. His mother seemed to him to be not only the most beautiful woman on earth but also the best story-teller in the world. Frank inherited both these traits in generous proportions. His almost insatiable curiosity, his deep faith, and his warm manner were destined from his childhood. His parents were committed church-goers and felt strongly enough about church integrity that they left their close-by Anglican church to attend a ‘non-conformist’ church.

When Frank was not much more than a baby he was taken in a pram for a walk in a nearby park. This is one of those few and curious occasions where something virtually inexplicable happened. An older “gypsy” woman came over to the infant in the pram and ‘prophesied’ over him. “Put a pen in his hand and he’ll never want for anything.” She could never have naturally known how understated her prediction would be!

Childhood

Frank had a delightful education in which he excelled. By his own admission he was not particularly good at sport, and perhaps to compensate for this deficiency he read books. It was at this early stage of his life that he was introduced to an institution which he was to frequent in various locations throughout the rest of his life: the library. Each day after school he dropped into his small local library and devoured adventure books and biographies. Combined with his mother’s broad literary knowledge and a brief encounter with Charles Dickens, young Frank became an extremely well-read young man which laid a foundation of knowledge for him from which he was to later base many of the illustrations in his 55 books.

His fond memories of Tunbridge Wells and his ability to reflect upon his natural environment from quite a young age, largely inspired by his father’s contagious fascination with flora and fauna, caused him to later write with great affection for the mountains of New Zealand, the bush of Australia, and the lawns of English gardens. It was around this time that he became fascinated with his Grandfather to whom he was often sent by his parents and marvelled that these visits often caused the addition of a brother or sister to his family. His Grandfather was a deeply religious man. One day Frank walked into his Grandfather’s lounge room and discovered him reading his Bible. Apparently he was reading it for pleasure. This left an indelible impression upon young Frank as he had never previously connected the words “sacred” and “worship” with the idea of “pleasure”. He was to ponder this for years to come.

Youth

Frank raced through secondary school due to his unusual ability to learn quickly. By 14 he had essentially graduated High School and soon after acquired a good grip of most of the classics including the Greek language through doing night school at the local Mechanics Institute (this later enabled him to complete a 4 year ministerial training program in just two years). In his autobiography, My Pilgrimage, he implies that his formal education was stopped early due to his parents’ inability to further pay the necessary fees. This meant that Frank had to enter the workforce. He became a clerk for a brick manufacturer. This inadvertantly equipped him to be able to write quickly in short-hand (a skill he taught himself and mastered during a later 5 month hospital stint), a talent which he would use throughout the course of his life.

This new job led to an amazingly understated turning point in his life. One day Frank was walking carelessly across some of the company’s rail tracks and failed to see an oncoming rail carriage which hit him and dragged him underneath severing his foot and leaving him suffering and incapacitated in hospital for 5 months with septicaemia and as an invalid for the rest of his life. Yet, in his life story he lightly glosses over this episode and never refers to his injury in any of his books! After he recuperated he had to learn to walk with the aid of a walking stick. Returning to work on his first day back he set off on a cold day for his three mile trek to the Brickworks. No sooner had he left through the family gate than his father heard his son crash on the icey pavement in pain. He had slipped and broken his damaged leg (he would go on to break this leg another three times throughout his life). His father recognising that such a long walk to work was not going to be possible for his son arranged for him to work in the city of London after his recovery.

London

After Frank’s recuperation, during months of dire illness as a result of his accident, he took up a position in London as a clerk when he was still a teen. He describes this as the loneliest time of his life. Partly to alleviate this loneliness he sought out a church to attend. Prior to leaving Tunbridge Wells his pastor had written a letter to him. This had a profound affect on him. He kept that letter on his writing desk till the day he died. It was not just the content of the letter that impressed (his pastor had urged Frank to accept Christ by subtlely pointing out that people are not Christians by virtue of church attendance, being good, or having Christian parents and that confirmation was the natural response of those who had experienced new birth through Christ) but it was also the medium which impressed Boreham. A letter as a pastoral tool. When Boreham himself became a pastor he used this device to great affect in pastoring those in his charge.

Frank came across several church groups in London which profoundly influenced him. He joined a non-conformist church, like his childhood one, but was drawn to a group of street preachers who practiced several things his limited church experience had not exposed him to. This included the “laying on of hands” and water-baptism by full immersion for adults. It was around this time that Frank received Christ and therefore became a Christian. At the age of 17 he wrote to his Tunbridge Wells pastor and told him the good news. He also searched the Scriptures to ascertain whether adult water baptism was Biblical. Becoming convinced that it indeed was, he was baptised.

He was also introduced to street preaching and seemed to excel at it. In fact, so good was he at it, that two life-changing things were soon to happen. By the time he was about 22 he became convinced that God had called him to the ministry. He resolved to prepare for this call. This was the first profound thing. The second was like it. Exploring the possibility that his ministry might be on foreign soil he met with Hudson Taylor for afternoon tea to investigate going to China. Hudson Taylor saw the limping Boreham and squashed the idea. Boreham resolved that if he couldn’t go to the Mission field he would commit his life and ministry to helping those who could. Frank continued to gain prominence as a street preacher and caught the attention of Charles Spurgeon who invited him to enrol in his Pastors Training College. Just two days after Spurgeon signed Boreham’s application, the Prince of Preachers died. F. W. Boreham was the last student to be recruited and approved by Charles Spurgeon.

Boreham thrived in Bible College. While serving in one of the Metropolitan Tabernacle’s pioneer churches at Theydon Bois (just outside London) as a student preacher he became besotted with a young lady five years his junior. While he never made his feelings known to her, although he longed to kiss her during one romantic stroll (an impulse he didn’t act on – but rectified when she came to bid him farewell at the dock when he was leaving for New Zealand).

Boreham’s Bible College training was cut short for two reasons. Firstly, he had already mastered most of the subjects taught in the final year (including Greek) and therefore was considered to have graduated and secondly with the tragic death of Charles Spurgeon his son had been called back from New Zealand to oversee the Mettab (Metropolitan Tabernacle). After prayer, in which the young Boreham had been praying about his future, he felt God speak to him about serving Him in foreign countries. As Boreham prayerfully dreamed, he told God that he would like to serve Him overseas (despite what Hudson Taylor had said was possible for him) and that he would like to pastor three churches for a decade each and then be available to churches of various denominations for the final phase of his ministry.

Shortly after praying this way, he had a fellow student approach him and say that he felt God was going to call him to New Zealand. About this time he was summoned to see Mr. Spurgeon. He presented himself and was invited by Spurgeon to accept the invitation of Mosgiel Baptist, a small rural church south of Duneedan, New Zealand.

Mosgiel

At the age of 24 in 1896 F. W. Boreham arrived in New Zealand to take up the pastorate of Mosgiel Baptist. New Zealand was less than 50 years old as a European settlement at this time. Mosgiel was then a pioneer town of around 1,000 people. Boreham’s affection for Stella was unabated. He wrote an unhopeful letter of proposal to her from New Zealand inviting her to come to New Zealand to be his bride. Amazingly, she accepted! They would go on to have 5 children.

Mosgiel became the unlikely launching pad for the greatest Christian essayist of all time to commence writing prolifically. Boreham approached the nearby Duneedan newspaper and enquired about organising a regular religious column. They agreed to the idea and from then Boreham’s sermons were converted to concise newspaper articles which would later appear in the Hobart Mercury and Melbourne Age weekly for 36 years.

Hobart & Armidale

Boreham served the Mosgiel Baptist church for 12 years. Then one day his wife Stella said to him that she sensed the Lord was going to send them to Hobart, Tasmania. He did. He served Hobart Tabernacle for 10 years until 1916 and ministered to civic leaders, politicians, businessmen, and visitors from across Australia. During the war years he served tirelessly—working every day of 1915—culminating in him having a physical breakdown by 1916. This was compounded by several serious falls when he broke his leg and damaged his hip. Yet his writing continued and amazingly his references to his own difficulties were absent. He was then invited to Armidale Baptist, Melbourne, which had a structured staff to assist Boreham concentrate on what he did best: preach and write. He served them for 12 years and was invited back often after his retirement. He then went on a tour of North America (including Canada) and the British Isles.

His sermons become books

Boreham lamented that he was not a more evangelistically effective preacher. Very few people came to Christ directly as a result of his preaching. During his time in Mosgiel, although he had great affection for the people, he felt somewhat wasted in such a small town at the other end of the earth. He never voiced these frustrations though. Instead, he took his Sunday sermons preached to a few dozen people, put them to paper and published some of these in the local newspaper and eventually became the editor of the New Zealand Baptist magazine where some others also appeared. He also sent some on to a Christian newspaper in Australia who gladly published them.

Shortly after arriving in New Zealand, Boreham was taken under the wing of Rev. John Doke who greatly impressed him. Frank marvelled at the depth of knowledge and wisdom Doke had despite his lack of formal education. Enquiring into how this happened, Mr. Doke gave the young Boreham perhaps the most profound advice he was ever to receive. “Read!” said Mr. Doke. “Read what?” asked Boreham. “Start with Gibbon!” replied Doke. And so Boreham did. He began reading Gibbon’s Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire and made a commitment to buy and read one new book a week for the rest of his life. This was a commitment, reflected Boreham, that financially strained his young family to breaking point at times but was to later reap huge dividends way beyond his initial investment.

About this time Boreham made a commitment to be an emminent preacher. He reasoned that if actors and barristers spend a large amount of their time, energy, and money to learn how to present their case before a jury in order to defend their client or entertain their audience, then how much more should those who fill the office of preacher study to become more proficient in their craft than barristers and actors since they are dealing with matters that are immense, infinite, and eternal? So Boreham made regular trips to Court rooms and theatres to learn. In some respects he found his newly acquired preaching skills to be way beyond his small rural congregation. He longed for a larger audience. This partly came about when he accepted the call to Hobart, Tasmania. But even there he found indifference and irregular attendance a huge challenge. He determined to preach with such vigour, passion, and interest that he would reverse these negatives. One Sunday night he spontaneously announced that starting next Sunday and for every second Sunday night following he would be dealing Texts That Changed The World. Perhaps those Sunday night congregational attendances never quite grew to Boreham’s expectations. I think every pastor and preacher has felt this pain. But what resulted was Boreham committing these sermons to print and were soon after published as A Bunch of Everlastings. This book was to sell in the millions and go through some 24 reprints!

Toward the end of Boreham’s ministry he went on a tour of the USA and Canada. He was stunned at the level of admiration and affection he received from Americans who had grown to love his books over the previous 30 years. When he arrived in Canada he was greeted as “Dr. Boreham” and went to correct his host who informed him that he had been given an honourary doctorate in divinity from the same Seminary which his hero, F.B. Meyer, had also been honoured. Travelling across the Atlantic to the U.K. he was overwhelmed with his reception. In Ireland his wife was publically honoured for her years of support of her husband’s ministry. Boreham was to almost tearfully respond by saying that he would forever be in the debt of Ireland for their warmth and thoughtfulness especially toward his wife. It was after this tour that Boreham reflected on the enormous numbers of people from both of these continents who thanked him for his books which had brought them to faith in Christ. It was then that Boreham realised that his years of toil in research for his preaching had not been wasted as God had indeed used him to be most effective in evangelising.

Boreham’s contribution

Frank Boreham was a masterful writer and preacher who drew large crowds in his latter years of ministry at Armadale and then during his lunch hour ministry at the inner city Presbyterian Church (which he did until he was 84). His books have had a profound impact on preachers and pastors all across the globe. Not the least of these was Billy Graham who met with FWB on his first visit to Australia. With one brief painful exception which took place early in his ministry, Boreham never used his writings to attack. Instead, he hoped to cause his reader to think, ponder, and appreciate. His terms of reference were summed up in his own words about the august responsibility of a minister of the Gospel: immensities, infinities, and eternities. He sought to help his audience appreciate the immensity of God and His wondrous creation. This refusal to distinguish between sacred and secular led Boreham to regard Aunts, lawns, sleep, and wet paint as somehow demonstrating the majesty of God. For those serious about preaching and maximising its effect, the writings of FWB cannot be overlooked as thousands of preachers have already discovered and tens of thousands will yet. In recent times this has been aided by Dr. Geoff Pound setting up The Official F. W. Boreham Blog Site, and Kregel Press in the USA beginning to reprint some of Boreham’s books.

If you come across one of F. W. Boreham’s many books in a second-hand bookstore, garage-sale, or an eBay listing—do yourself a favour. Buy it! Serious collectors are now paying between $500 to $1000 for some of his rarer editions! If you’re not interested in reading any of Boreham’s books, but stumble across a neglected volume in some jumble sale, please buy it and send to me! It may just be one of the 15 titles that I am yet to acquire and am the worse off for having not done so yet.

Copyright © 2007 Dr. Andrew Corbett. Used by permission.

I was first introduced to the writings of F. W. Boreham by my brother-in-law, Jeremy Pinero. At the time I read only a few excerpts from his books.

Several years later, Jeremy and I were rummaging through a second-hand bookstore in Wollongong when we came across a set of books by F. W. Boreham. Jeremy could hardly contain his excitement as he bargained with the bookseller to purchase the books. I don’t remember the final price they agreed on, but Jeremy definitely considered it a bargain.

Since that time I’ve had the opportunity to read additional selections from Boreham’s writings and have found him to be possessed of a masterful style and profound insight.

Over the coming weeks, I would like to focus on the life and writings of this best selling Australian author of all time. In the next post, I’ll present an overview of the life of F. W. Boreham. In the posts following, I will present selected excerpts from the writings of Boreham.

I trust that your life will be blessed and enriched as you get to know this eminent Australian pastor and author.

Grace to you.

After some ministry in the US and England, Pink spent three years in Sydney as a preacher and writer.  His arrival in 1925 stirred the Baptist churches, who were challenged by his expository preaching.  One local remembered:

“‘He was not what some might term a “fiery” preacher although he was very forthright, clear and uncompromising.’  … He employed no gestures and did not shout.  ’…He never deviated from his theme with stories or quip sayings.  Everyone present knew that he had no time for levity for he spoke as a man whose one purpose was to honour the Blessed Trinity and to show what the Word of God requires of us.”

He worked hard in his ministry as pastor and writer.  He and his wife published a regular magazine of his writings, “Studies In The Scriptures.”  Its circulation was never large (usually less than 1000 subscribers) but his articles have been re-published into many books.  Here is a glimpse of his workload, as he describes:

On many occasions has this writer — when preaching six times a week (rarely for less than an hour, usually seventy-five to ninety minutes) in the heat of Australia, journeying here and there to do so — returned home at 10pm, feeling worn and weary and pleading this promise expectantly and partaking of light refreshment, sat down for four hours’ hard study and writing an article for this magazine.

Pink was never able to remain long at any one church, probably due to his personality.  He served briefly as pastor in two Sydney churches before returning eventually to the US.  Iain Murray describes him as “an unwanted preacher” and ironically, he distanced himself from church life in later years.   He died in Scotland in 1952.

Despite personal shortcomings, his writings have endured to our benefit.  During his Sydney years, Pink held pointed views which are still relevant to evangelical churches here today.

Calvinism & Arminianism

There are Arminians who have presented the ‘free-will’ of man in such a way as to virtually dethrone God, and I have no sympathy whatever with their system.  On the other hand, there have been some Calvinists who have presented a kind of fatalism (I know not what else to term it) reducing man to nothing more than a block of wood, exonerating him of all blame and excusing him for his unbelief.  But they are both equally wrong, and I scarcely know which is the more mischievous of the two.

Worldly, Weak Churches & Sound Doctrine

The vast majority of the churches are in a sorry state.  Those that are out-and-out worldly are at their wits’ end to invent new devices for drawing a crowd.  Others which still preserve an outward form of godliness provide nothing substantial for the soul; there is little ministering of Christ to the heart and little preaching of ‘sound doctrine’, without which souls cannot be built up and established in the faith.  … The great need of Australia today is for God-sent and God-anointed men, who will not shun to declare all the counsel of God; men in whom the Word of Christ dwells richly, so that they can say with the apostle, ‘Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel’; men on whom rests the fear of God, so that they are delivered from the fear of man.”

Purity First

Today it is true almost everywhere, that we are far more concerned about the results of the gospel than we are about the purity of it!  … Is it not true that the first great question asked everywhere today is, What are the ‘results’?  What is the fruitage?  How many people have been saved in your church the last year?  I am not saying that the question has no importance, but I do say that, if that is the first question that is asked, it only shows what a low level we are living on!  The first question we ought to ask is, How scripturally is the gospel being preached in your church?  Is the preacher magnifying Christ?  Is the preacher emphasising the absolute sufficiency of his finished work?

Source: The Life Of Arthur W. Pink, Iain Murray

Ben Kwok