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THE PERSON WHO DR. F. W. BOREHAM WROTE MOST ABOUT

F.W.B. seated in Hobart Baptist Tabernacle

For those acquainted with Dr. Boreham’s books, you would be aware that FWB was a student of people, particularly preachers. He drew inspiration from a variety of people and included many of them in his series Texts That Made History. In reading his biography, it becomes apparent that people much lauded by others were not the ones who FWB lauded the most. An obvious example of this is the acclaim given to ‘the Prince of Preachers’, Charles Haddon Spurgeon. Boreham sat under C.H. Spurgeon’s ministry. But he was never particularly impressed by what he heard and commented that there were other far better preachers in London at the time of Spurgeon. Yet, over the years Boreham’s estimation of Spurgeon mellowed and improved. In a nice tribute to his former pastor, he presented the Kew Baptist Church with a framed copy of the sermon notes he took of one of Spurgeon’s last sermons. You will notice how frequently and favourably Boreham refers to CHS in his latter books. But there is one person who Dr. Boreham particularly admired over the course of his pastoral and preaching ministry. By his own admission there were few books that F.W. Boreham read more than twice, and even fewer that he read more than three times, but The Memoir and Remains of Robert Murray McCheyne by Andrew Bonar is one of them.

I have Dr. Boreham’s copy of this book in my possession and can see that he has read it often and annotated it throughout the memoir section (the last section of the book is a collection of McCheyne’s sermons). In his essay and sermon, The Secret of Murray McCheyne, he states-

AS I approach my task this morning I find, on the left-hand side of my desk, a well-worn book that I greatly prize, and, on the right-hand side, a pair of photographs of almost equal value. The book is the Memoir of the Rev. Robert Murray McCheyne, by his intimate friend, Dr. Andrew Bonar. I bought it and read it in the early days of my Mosgiel ministry: I have read it many times since; and, in view of the fact that the world is just now celebrating the centenary of McCheyne, I have read it yet once more during the past few days, There are very few books that will bear frequent perusal; but, in this case, each re-reading has proved more stimulating and more profitable than any of its predecessors.
A Late Lark Singing

Inside the Memoir of Robert Murray McCheyne

By the time FWB wrote this war-time essay about the great Scottish preacher, he himself had already been acclaimed by some as the one of the greatest preachers of his day and it was in the ministry of McCheyne that he found one of the essential elements of all the great preachers. He writes, “to read the Memoir of Robert Murray McCheyne is to share the heavenly glow of his radiant and beautiful soul” (A.L.L.S. p. 59). He noted that even though McCheyne “was a scholar, qualified to speak with authority on matters of geology and natural history; his Hebrew served him in good stead when conversing with learned European Jews; he appreciated the finer points of Greek translation; and, when he wished to secure the entries in his diary from curious eyes, he dropped into Latin and made his notes in that ancient tongue with perfect facility and ease” (A.L.L.S. p. 60) it wasn’t McCheyne’s great intellect which impressed his hearers. Dr. Boreham’s finds the secret of McCheyne appeal in the pulpit to be ‘his presence.’ Throughout the ’Memoir FBW has written the word presence in pencil and then noted in his essay outline several times. He wrote-

What was his secret? It was simply this: he walked with God. He knew from the first that his course would be a brief one. His earliest letters bear the seal The Night Cometh. He felt that, in order to make the most of his meagre span of years, he must dwell in the secret place and abide under the shadow. God was always closer to him than breathing, nearer than hands or feet. I find him, in the course of his Jewish mission, in a crowded foreign city. ‘How real God is!’ he says to himself. ‘He is the only person I can talk to!’ On the very next page, I find him, by way of contrast, in the solitudes of the desert, not a soul in sight. ‘How near God seems!’ he remarks. He used to say that, even in days of sickness and depression, he could never really doubt, for God had given him such overwhelming manifestations of His presence when in the pulpit that he could live on the memory of those rapturous experiences in drearier and darker days. His life was hid with Christ in God.
(A.L.L.S. p. 65)

Dr. F.W. Boreham’s preliminary article about Robert Murray McCheyne as it appeared in the Australian Christian World.

Dr. F.W. Boreham’s preliminary article about Robert Murray McCheyne as it appeared in the Melbourne Age newspaper.

F.W. Boreham clipped several of the articles he wrote about McCheyne and kept them inside his copy of Dr. Andrew Bonar’s biography of McCheyne. His submission to the Melbourne Age Newspaper about the centenary of McCheyne’s passing was just over a hundred words, while his piece submitted to the Australian Christian World, which extolled McCheyne’s amazing six years as a pastor and preacher in Dundee, was considerably longer and became the basis for a chapter in his A Late Lark Singing. In this essay, Dr. Boreham discusses how Murray McCheyne was deeply impacted by the untimely passing of his older brother, David. After three years of ministry at St. Peter’s in Dundee with a congregation of a thousand worshipers, McCheyne was almost physically broken. He was invited to be a part of a study tour in Palestine where he spent the next three years. It was his time in Palestine that birthed within the Scot an unusually deep burden for the lost souls of people. He played a significant role in leading several Jewish scholars to Christ. While he was recovering in Palestine, his church in Dundee was experiencing something of a revival which McCheyne was keen to return to. Upon returning to Dundee, it was immediately obvious to all that something quite spiritually profound had happened to their young pastor. FWB discusses this in his essay on McCheyne, which you can read here.

Dr. Boreham was already in his 70s when he finally wrote about the man he deeply admired. In reading his tribute to R. Murray McCheyne, it is obvious just how inspired he was with someone who lived their life hid in Christ. The result of such intimacy with Christ, Dr. Boreham writes, “It was in rapt communion with the unseen that he became infected by his Master’s insatiable hunger for the souls of men. He wept over Dundee as Jesus wept over Jerusalem” (A.L.L.S. p. 66). In Howard Crago’s biography of FWB he shares how the aged Dr. Boreham, in his final years, revisited some of the books that stirred him as a young preacher, and there is a very good chance that this book on McCheyne was one of them.

Dr. Andrew Corbett