World War I took a large toll on FWB. In 1915-16, the deacons at Hobart Baptist Church were extremely supportive and caring of their now broken pastor. The Honour Boards hanging in the Fellowship Hall of Hobart Baptist Church even to this day point to cause of F.W. Boreham’s physical and emotional breaking. His health was so damaged that his physician, Doctor Harry Benjafield (1845-1917), told him, “Of course you must go. It is your only hope. If you remain here any longer in your present condition, your health will be irreparably ruined” (T. Howard Crago, The F.W. Boreham Story, p. 165). With that, Boreham accepted the position of a well-staffed church, Armadale Baptist, in Melbourne, where he was freed from many of the administrative duties that he had found taxing at Hobart. When he arrived at Armadale though he was still a broken man who had recently had yet another serious fall—yet again re-breaking his leg. It would be some time before he regained confidence to walk on his fragile leg and hit his stride as a internationally world-renowned preacher.

Many pastors and preachers finish up their ministry and leave their pastorates only to find it difficult to integrate into a church where they no longer have their preaching responsibilities. One such pastor that I spoke with recently told me that for two decades his identity — and reason for attending his church — was due to his ministry with that church. Upon leaving his pastorate he has struggled for the past ten years to commit to a local church or even be a regular attender at one. This former pastor is not the only one who I have met who has told the same thing. Thus, you might be forgiven for thinking that a pastor such as Dr. F.W. Boreham, who had achieved international renown as one of the world’s most influential preachers in his day, would have also struggled to integrate into a local church upon his retirement. But he didn’t and here’s why.

It is not surprising to me that people wonder whether FWB had referenced the writings of the Lewis. They were both from England. They both wrote extensively. They both had a large public platform. Both engaged in story-telling. Both contributed apologetically and culturally as ‘public theologians’ (Lewis initially through his BBC broadcasts, then through his books, and Boreham initially through his weekly newspaper editorials, then his books). 

JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis were members of the “Inklings”

 However, there may have been several reasons why Dr. Boreham did not reference C.S. Lewis in his essays. Firstly, while C.S. Lewis had gained popularity in England through the 1940s, he was not as widely well-known in Australia at that time. On the other hand, FWB’s books were actually published in England from 1901 through to the 1950s, and in the USA from the 1920s. C.S. Lewis was becoming known in the USA in the early 1950s, but his widespread admiration by Americans did not come until after his death in 1959 when Harper Collins began re-publishing his books (at the instigation of Walter Hooper, the secretary of CS Lewis).

When FWB and Stella arrived in Hobart, Tasmania in 1906, he set to work in repairing a fractured church which had recently experienced a bitter split. Rather than taking sides—or even trying to reconcile sides—FWB focused on preaching the good news of God forgiving sinners through the work of His Son. Within a few months of his arrival, the Hobart church had gone from nearly empty to mostly full. Many of those who had left in the split had now returned and the church had been re-visioned around reaching out to its city.

In 1915 F.W. Boreham rallied the young men of Hobart to enlist in the cause of the Empire and join the war effort in Europe. But as the news from Gallipoli reached Tasmania, and FWB set about the task of delivering the telegrams on behalf of the War Department of the Australian Government, his health increasingly began to fail, as did his nerve. In 1916 his doctor advised him to relocate to a warmer and less stressful situation. He resigned from Hobart Baptist, and accepted an invitation to become the pastor of the Armadale Baptist Church in Melbourne. But more significantly, F.W. Boreham determined that he would never speak or write of the war again. But as fresh tensions were brewing once again in Europe he came under increasing criticism for not responding to it. Instead, he chose to deal with “eternity, infinities, and immensities”.