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THE DRUMS OF DAWN
Published 1933

Part I

1. The Lilac Sunshade

2. The Far Country

3. The Ivory Plaque

4. Under The Clocks

5. Find Time!

6. You Never Can Tell

7. Strange Craft

8. Still Near Me, Pointing Upward

Part II

1. The Black Cockatoo

2. Her Second Husband

3. The Stained-Glass Window

4. The Ritual Of Providence Chapel

5. The White Giants

6. Look Before You Leap!

7. The Tower of Babel

8. Get Rid of It!

Part III

1. A Rod That Budded

2. The Frogs

3. Remember Lot’s Wife

4. A Dreamer of Infinities

5. A Very Gallant Lady

6. Beauty In Homespun

7. My Novel

8. The House That Jack Built

9. A Little Chap In Knickerbockers

“The White Giants”

The old mountain has a way of his own – a very exasperating way, yet a wonderfully tantalizing way. Those who have struggled up his rugged slopes know how artfully he lures the climbers on. At no point does the entire track, from base to summit, lie open to the scrambler’s eye. Such a demonstration would break the aspirant’s heart. No, no ; the mountain is far too wise for that ! He shows us the path for a couple of hundred yards ; and, when we have mastered that bit of the way, he opens out another stretch. And so on. When we start, fresh and keen, we enjoy the novelty of these turns and twists. And when, higher up, we begin to tire, we muster new courage by whispering to ourselves that this short ascent before us may, very possibly, be the last. We reach the crest, and, to our disappointment, another appears ! ‘Ah, well,’ we say, if this isn’t the summit, that must be !’ And at last we stand proudly on the loftiest peak.

Life treats us in the same wise way. We are only permitted, at one time, to see a tiny stretch of the road. If we saw it all, we should shrink back in dismay. Fancy showing University Examination Papers to a tiny tot just wrestling with the intricacies of the alphabet ! Or suppose that this good old couple, now celebrating their golden wedding, had been shown, on their marriage morning, a list of all the trials and difficulties that lay ahead of them ! Things are not so ordained. We never see the entire stretch of the road from any one point. Life is not a long, straight path – the untrodden portion clearly visible – it is a winding and undulating lane. ‘Come on,’ Life seems to say, showing us just one little bit of the track, ‘you can manage this – and this – and now this again !’ And those who can be persuaded to concentrate their flagging energies on each stretch as it unfolds itself find themselves standing at last, with glowing hearts and flushed faces, on the lonely and little trodden summit.
-FWB

Look Before You Leap !

“The Cross never finds its rightful place in a man’s heart until it takes his breath away.
It becomes life’s supreme and most bewildering astonishment. At his mother’s knee a man may have heard again and again the sweet sad story of the crucifixion. Hundreds of times its pathos may have been impressed upon him by earnest teachers and eloquent preachers. The first songs that he learned to sing may have fastened upon his heart the pitifulness of the world’s great tragedy.”

Jesus, who lived above the sky,
Came down to be a man and die;
And in the Bible we may see
How very good He used to be.
But such a cruel death He died-
He was hung up and crucified !
And those kind hands that did such good,
They nailed them to a cross of wood.

“By iteration and reiteration, by constant representation in song and picture and speech, the story of man has ever heard. It matters nothing. A day will come – the greatest day in his soul’s long pilgrimage – in which the Cross will take to itself all the characteristics of an incredible sensation. He will scarcely believe the evidence of his senses.”
Dr. F.W. Boreham,
The Drums of Dawn, “Look Before You Leap!”, 1933, pages 150-151

 The Tower of Babel, therefore, was a Tower of Blunders. Every brick was a blunder. These early builders were wrong in their Motive, wrong in their Method, wrong in their Materials – wrong in everything! They were wrong in their basic assumption that heaven is firtree-high. I do no mean that, since the nearest star is billions of miles away, they thought heaven too near. I mean that they thought heaven too remote. Why build a tower? God is never as far away as the tops of firtrees!

Speak to Him thou, for He hears, and Spirit with Spirit can meet-
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet.

 Therein lies the pathos of this old-world story. The labour of these labourers was utterly superfluous: no tower was needed. That is the most poignantly pathetic thing in human experience. We make religion a drudgery, a grind, a slavery when it should be a revelry, a festival, an everlasting song.

-F.W. Boreham, The Drums of Dawn, “The Tower of Babel”, 1933, p. 166-167