Boreham Pointing to Nature

In adopting the communication metaphor of ‘the pointer’, it is interesting to ask, “To what did his editorials point?”

In his newspaper editorials the Bible was certainly not the first place to which he directed his readers. Furthermore, his editorials had scant ecclesiological references and he did not seek to draw his reader’s attention to the church as the primary place where they might discover truth. Rather, Boreham pointed his readers to various public spheres in the hope that they would come to a deeper understanding of God. One of the spheres was the realm of nature.

In his nature editorials, in which he wrote of the “maxims of the mud”,[1] the “stones articulate”,[2] the “rhetoric of the rocks”,[3] rocks as “the manuscripts of God”[4] and the universe as “the archives of the ages”,[5] Boreham was following the biblical tradition of pointing his readers to “look at the birds of the air” and “consider the lilies of the field.”[6]

Geoff Pound

Image: ‘the rhetoric of the rocks.’ Rock faces from the Hajar mountains, Fujairah, United Arab Emirates.

[1] F W Boreham, The other side of the hill,152.
[2] Boreham, Mercury, 5 July 1952.
[3] Boreham, Mercury, 25 May 1957.
[4] F W Boreham, When the swans fly high (London: The Epworth Press, 1931), 63.
[5] Boreham, Mercury, 26 October 1957; Age, 5 September 1953.
[6] Matt. 6: 26, 28.