"Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted"
(Matt. 5:4).
Blessed are they that mourn! the Saviour says; and I think that I begin to understand him. "Blessed are those who feel" he seems to say. The tendency is to become insensitive. We get used to things. Our susceptibilities become seared. The doctor, who nearly fainted at his first operation, learns in time to look upon pain without emotion. The minister is so much among the sorrowing and the bereaved that he is in peril of regarding the tears of the mourner with professional nonchalance. He takes them for granted. It is not easy under such conditions to keep the spirit fresh and the heart tender. Blessed are they that mourn! Mourning implies a soft, copious, heartfelt grief--a grief that has broken all restraint and finds relief in welcome floods of tears. There is all the difference in the world between a keen, cutting wind with just a dash of rain in it, and a warm tropical shower. There is just the same difference between the stiff and formal expression of our sympathy and the deep and heartfelt sorrow that is the earnest and surety of real blessedness.
Unless we are constantly on our guard against it, we are all in danger of being drawn into the horrible vortex of insensibility.
Be the first to react on this!
Frank William Boreham was a Baptist preacher best known in New Zealand, Australia, and England. Boreham heard the great American preacher Dwight L. Moody during his youth. Boreham became a Baptist preacher after conversion to Christianity while working in London. Boreham 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 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 in particular for a discussion, due in great part to Boreham's widely read and respected writings.
Boreham wrote some 3,000 editorials that appeared in the Hobart Mercury every week for 47 years between 1912-1959, 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. Many of these books received wide international acclaim.