Spurgeon Gems on Death and Dying.

Ecclesiastes 7, 1 and 2. The day of death is better than the day of birth. It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of every man. The living should take this to heart.

The sight of a funeral is a very healthful thing for the soul. It is very wise to talk about death. The shroud, the grave, and the shovel may teach us more of true wisdom than all the learned heads that ever pondered vain philosophy, or all the lips that ever uttered earth-born science. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning But the heart of fools is in the house of pleasure."

Ecclesiastes 7, 4. We are all like trees marked for the woodsman's axe. The fall of one should remind us that for everyone, whether as great as the cedar or as lowly as the fir tree, the appointed hour is hurrying on apace.

We talk of death too lightly. It is solemn work for the best of men. I can assure you that it is no child's play to die. May we regard death as the most weighty of all events, and be sobered by its approach.

The young may die. The old must die. There is no pain in death. The pain is in life. When a man dies, there is an end of life's pain. Death is the pain killer, not the pain maker. It is not a loss to die. It is a lasting, perpetual gain. Death is the physician that eases all pain. Death is no punishment to the believer. It is the gate of endless joy.

I never yet heard regrets from dying men that they had done too much for Christ or lived too earnestly for Him. To be prepared to die is to be prepared to live. where death leaves you, judgment will find you, and eternity will keep you. He who does not prepare for death is more than an ordinary fool. He is a madman.

The Lord will give dying grace in dying moments. Let us learn to hold our dearest friends loosely. Let us love them, but let us always learn to love them as dying things. We go through the dark valley of death and emerge into the light of eternity. We do not die, but only wake in eternity.

God has fixed the hour of our death. It can neither be postponed by skill of physician nor hastened by malice of foe. Time, how short! Death, how brief! Eternity, how long! Immortality, how endless!

There is an essential difference between the death of the godly and the death of the ungodly. Death comes to the ungodly man as a penal infliction, but to the righteous man as a summons to his father's palace. To the lost sinner, death is an executioner. To the saint, death is a casting aside of his sins and infirmities. Death to the wicked is the king of terrors. Death to the saint is the end of terrors and the commencement of eternal glory.

Oh, if we could not die, it would be horrible indeed. Who wants to be chained to this poor life for a century or longer? It is the very joy of this earthly life to think that it will come to an end.

For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far.

Philippians 1, 21, 23.