Frank W. Boreham


Frank William Boreham OBE was a Baptist preacher best known in New Zealand, Australia, and England.

Life and career

Boreham's birth coincided with the end of the Franco-Prussian War. He could say in later life, "Salvoes of artillery and peals of bells echoed across Europe on the morning of my birth." He was one of 10 children.
Boreham heard the great American preacher Dwight L. Moody during his youth. On another occasion he was badly injured and spent considerable time in hospital recovering, nursed by a Roman Catholic woman who widened his insight of ecumenism.
Boreham became a Baptist preacher after conversion to Christianity while working in London. He was probably the last student interviewed by Charles Spurgeon for entry into his Pastor's College. After graduation, Boreham accepted a ministry at Mosgiel church, Dunedin, New Zealand, in March 1895 and there began his prolific writings, initially for the local newspaper.
He later was a pastor in Hobart, Tasmania, and then on mainland Australia in Melbourne at Armadale and Kew.
He notionally retired in 1928 at age 57, but continued to preach and write. During Billy Graham's evangelistic campaign in Australia in early 1959 Graham sought out Boreham for a discussion, due in great part to Boreham's widely read and respected writings.

Published works

Boreham wrote some 3,000 editorials that appeared weekly in the Hobart Mercury for 47 years between 1912 and 1959, and others in the Melbourne Age. He was calling on these works for yet another book, with one article for each day of the year, when he died.
He published some 46 books with Epworth Press, the last The Tide Comes In in 1958, only months before his death. Many of these books received wide international acclaim. Most famous is his series of five books, published between 1920 and 1928, derived from the 125 sermons on the theme "Texts that Made History": A Bunch of Everlastings, A Handful of Stars, A Casket of Cameos, A Faggot of Torches, and A Temple of Topaz.
Edited compilations:
In 2016, nearly 50 years after Boreham's death, John Broadbanks Publishing published two volumes of previously unpublished material: Nuggets of Romance and Slices of Infinity. In addition, Pioneer Library and John Broadbanks Publishing are seeking to revive many of his out-of-print books.