Rating: ★★★★★

Who: F. W. Boreham, British pastor and author of more than 50 books. He spent most of his life pastoring in New Zealand and Australia. (See the article “Who Is F. W. Boreham?”)

Genre: On Boreham’s spiritual essays: F. W. Boreham is difficult to place into a genre. A reviewer wrote in Preacher’s Magazine, “There is only one Boreham.” His writing is a mix of essay writing and what I call “literary preaching”—preaching that is intensely informed by both Christian and classic literature. In the main body of his work (“classic Boreham”), some chapters were originally sermons; others were culled from his 3000 biographical essays. In any case, most of his 49 books are a goldmine of suitable (if light) devotional reading. (See my guide to his published works.)

Overview:

This is a sought-after book of essays, and came highly recommended.

After his so-called retirement, many of Boreham’s shorter articles were collected into full volumes. This includes Boulevards of Paradise, The Arrows of Desire, Dreams at Sunset, The Tide Comes In, and The Last Milestone; all of these books consist of somewhat shorter articles than Boreham’s earlier volumes of essays.

Meat:

There are several great adventure and missions stories in this volume. About twenty of the articles were biographical. Sometimes Boreham would repeat biographical anecdotes from famous people; but some of the stories in this book were unique material that clearly required extensive reading and research.

It has been about ten years since I read this book, but I distinctly remember the following essays:

“Flying Fingers” (about Isaac Pitman)

“The Whale’s Tooth” (about missions in Polynesia)

“The Conquest of the Braves” (about John Eliot)

“On the Road to Yemen” (about Ion Keith-Falconer)

All of these are seldom-referenced stories, and in my voluminous reading in Christian biography and missions, I have hardly come across a reference to any of the essays as told above. These are the treasures of Boreham’s great depth and breadth of reading.

Bones:

In Boreham’s short articles, which were often culled from newspaper articles, not all subject matter was spiritual, so a few of the stories are lacking in any spiritual application. That is always a disappointment when you have limited time and are using Boreham’s books as devotional reading. Fortunately, though, the occasional interesting-but-not-so-spiritual essay is the exception and not the rule.