Boreham on Evening and Morning

F W Boreham is writing on the verandah of his house after a hot day. As he writes and the sun sets, he makes these reflections:

It is getting darker now, and I can scarcely see to write. But as I watch the last faint tints die away from the leaden clouds about the mountain, I find it good to reflect that my sunset means some other's sunrise.

The morning is over there, and somebody is revelling in its sweetness and saying that it is good to be alive. And here am I in the dusk. And so, all unsuspecting, I stumble upon something substitutionary, something vicarious, something like a sacrament, in these fading, flickering hues about the mountain's brow. I am plunging into darkness that some one else may enjoy the day. I am feeling it chilly and cold that some one else may laugh in the glorious sunshine.

I am about to lie down and abandon myself to sleep, Death's own twin sister, that some one else over there in the land of the morning may wake up and feel the rush and riot of new life surging tumultuously through every vein.

If only I can manage to remember this, it will often cheer me in the darkness. Have I lost my beautiful morning? It is bathing some other face in sunshine. Is my day waning? Some other is waxing. The old leaves fall off only because the new buds are pushing their way through.

‘I must decrease,’ cried John the Baptist bravely, ‘but He must increase!’ And that fine philosophy, if only I can make it my own, will help me, even when my last sun sets, to greet the unseen with a cheer.

F W Boreham, ‘The Wings of the Morning’, The Golden Milestone (London: Charles H Kelly, 1915), 196-197.

Image: “in these fading, flickering hues about the mountain's brow.”

Boreham on Dreams and Discernment

Today’s Boreham posting appears on the new site Discernment Resources.

Check it out and bookmark it, especially if you are interested in stories and resources to do with decision making and discernment and conversation related to the online book, Making Life Decisions: Journey in Discernment.

Dr Geoff Pound

Image: John Wesley

Boreham on the Manner and the Means

I was reading yesterday Mr. Charles H. E. Brookfield's Random Reminiscences…

In the course of his story he tells us of his serious illness. 'My attack was a pretty bad one,' he says. 'Sir William Jenner was called in consultation. He was a delightful man, and his bedside manner was a lesson to all young doctors.

He would enter the room slowly, fold up his greatcoat, put his hat on the top of it, with his gloves inside, and then settle down into an easy chair and converse for a while upon general topics, as though you were the only patient he had in the world.'

Now here are two things—Sir William's medicine and Sir William's manner. The great doctor's manner was quite valueless in itself; but the doctor's manner, fortifying the doctor's medicine, made his treatment a delight.

This story about the manner and the means could apply to all walks of life.

F W Boreham, ‘A Philosophy of Pickles’, The Golden Milestone (London: Charles H Kelly, 1915), 186-187.

Image Sir William Jenner, Vanity Fair cartoon.