Dying Daily

No. 828-14:481. A Sermon Delivered On Sunday Morning, August 30, 1868, By C. H. Spurgeon, At The Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.

I die daily. (1 Corinthians 15:31)

1. In a certain sense we all do this. The very moment we begin to live we begin to die. We are like hourglasses; there are fewer sands left to run from the very moment they begin to trickle down. Our entire life is like an ebbing tide: our first months and years may look like advancing waves, but they are really retreating, and by and by the living flood will be replaced by the mire of death.

   Our pulse, like muffled drums, are beating
   Funeral marches to the tomb;

Or, as Watts words it—

   Every beating pulse we tell,
   Leaves but the number less.

2. This is no land of the living, but the land of the dying, and this so called life is only one protracted act of death. This is not our rest, our soul is always on the wing; like the swallows, we must depart for another land. Life is a long descent to the valley of the shadow of death, it slopes gradually to the precipice, and no man can prevent his feet from sliding down it every hour. We fly like arrows to that common target of mankind—the grave. So that we may all say in the words of the text, “I die daily.”

3. For some also this may be affirmed in a very painful and unhappy sense. They die daily because they feel a thousand deaths in fearing one. They are those of whom the apostle writes, “who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.” This nightmare oppresses them and breaks their rest; this ghost stalks before them at all hours, and makes life grim with foreboding; this drop of gall makes all their pleasant things bitter. They are afraid to die, and yet are so fascinated by death that they cannot take their eyes off it. They cannot shake off the chill horror of the grave, their clothes seem to them to smell of the vault, and their food tastes like the mortuary. They are slaves to a fear whose chains are heavy. These timorous doves ought to remember that Jesus Christ came into this world on purpose so that he might deliver such as they are. It was never his intention that any of his people should be subject to the fear of death, nor ought they to be, nor indeed would they be if they walked by faith, for what can there be in death for a Christian to fear? “The sting of death is sin,” but that is pardoned; “the strength of sin is the law,” but Christ has fulfilled it. What is dying except departing to be with Christ, which is far better? And why should a man fear what is far better for him, which will rid him of all his ills, admit him into unlimited blessedness, take him away from all fear and all care, and conduct him to the fulness of the glory which is laid up in Christ Jesus? I trust you and I may never have to moan out, in that mournful and gloomy sense, “I die daily,” but with holy joy may we look forward to the hour of our departure, which is so near at hand.

4. Paul used this expression in a heroic sense, to which I fear you and I are not very likely to attain. He said, “I die daily,” because every day he deliberately put his life in jeopardy for the cause of Jesus Christ. One day he went into the Jewish synagogue, knowing that in all probability they would drag him out, scourge him with rods, or, perhaps, in fanatic zeal, stone him with stones. Another day he was found in the street preaching to a multitude of idolaters, and denouncing their gods, irritating them by exposing their vices, and by advancing truths which were novelties, and so contrary to their prejudices that they could not endure them. Behold him often crossing the sea in a frail barque, or passing over rugged mountains, among robbers; in perils from the mountain torrents, and from cold and nakedness. In all places he lived the life of one whose neck was always on the block, who stood ready at any minute to offer himself up as a sacrifice for Christ. In these more silken days, we cannot run such serious risks, and it is to our shame that there are some who are not willing to run even the little risks which the times may demand. We know professors who cannot imperil their business by an affirmation of their faith, and others who cannot risk the breaking of some fond connection for the sake of the cross of Christ. Alas! there are many who are ashamed of Jesus, because a father or a mother or a brother might perhaps ridicule them or sneer at them. They are ashamed to bear the loss of anything, when our apostle rejoiced to suffer the loss of all things, and considered them only dung so that he might win Christ. May the heroic age of Christianity return to us, and even if it should be necessary that the furnace should be heated once again, yet if God’s gold may only glow with that clear, bright lustre which it exhibited in the former days, we may well be satisfied with the fury of the blazing coals. The persecuted were happy men despite their sorrows, and honoured men notwithstanding their shame; they were earth’s princes, heaven’s peers; for they could say that every day they were delivered to death for Christ’s sake, but rejoiced and were exceedingly glad that they were privileged to suffer for the cross of Christ.

5. We shall now take our text in a practical spiritual sense. Neither fixing our minds upon its universal sense, nor yet upon its mournful nor even upon its heroic meaning, but taking it in a spiritual way, common to all the saints, “I die daily.” Our subject this morning is the art and mystery of dying every day.

6. First, we shall notice some previous requirements for the practice of this art; secondly, we shall speak upon in what this art consists; and thirdly, upon the great benefits which will accrue to those who shall learn to die daily.

7. I. First, there are CERTAIN THINGS PREVIOUSLY NECESSARY before a man can be a scholar in this great art of dying every day.

8. The first requirement is that he must be willing to die; for if he shall shrink at death, and covet life, and dread even the thought of departure, it will be a miserable thought for him that he will have to die one day, but he will not be at all likely to be an apt pupil in the art of dying today, and tomorrow, and the next day, and every day that he lives. With a natural disinclination, with an awful fear, and a terrible shrinking from the very fact of dissolution, he will not be at all eager to bring his mind to find delight and satisfaction in the contemplation of the grave. In order that a man should be willing to die daily he must be a saved man, he must have his sins forgiven, and he must know it by infallible assurance, or else death will be to him of all things the most terrible. He must be clad in the righteousness of Jesus Christ as with armour of proof, and he must know that he has it on, or else death will be an arrow that will afflict him terribly, and from it he will shrink with all his soul. He must be a man perfectly at peace with his Creator, not ashamed to look into his Maker’s face in Christ Jesus, nor afraid to stand before Jehovah’s solemn judgment bar. He must, in fact, have looked by faith to the blood stained tree, and he must have seen Jesus making a full atonement there for sin; he must have accepted that atonement as being made for him; he must be resting on it with an unstaggering faith, believing that all his sin is put away through that one dread sacrifice. He must know that the righteousness of Christ is wrapped around him, and that he is accepted in the Beloved, or else to talk to him of dying daily would be somewhat analogous to inviting the thief to be hanged daily, or asking a culprit to be deported daily. It will be enough, he thinks, to endure once that dread sharp stroke which will separate him from his joys; he certainly will not foredate and anticipate the period, but be glad to forget it while he can, crying, “Let us drown care, and live while we live.”

9. Yet more is necessary than this to make a good student of the art of daily dying. A man must not only submissively await his dissolution, but he must be even desirous of departure, and cheered with the hope of the better land. A hard thing, you say, yet not impossible. Impossible perhaps to nature, for it shrinks from the harsh thought of dissolution, but possible enough for grace, for grace overlooks the temporary separation, anticipating the bright resurrection and the everlasting glory. To an ungodly man, to die can never be a thing to be desired, for what remains for him after death? His possessions go from him. Like birds that have rested for a little while upon the field, but take to their wings when the traveller claps his hands, so all the worldling’s riches must take to themselves wings and fly away, and what remains for the sinner in the next world? A fearful looking for of judgment, and of fiery indignation. Ungodly men and women, you know what you have to expect when you shall be called to the unknown land, to face the Judge upon his throne. You will be condemned, banished, accursed, executed, destroyed for ever. It is not possible that death should be a welcome thing for drunkards and unclean people, or even for merely moral men. But the believer, what about him? To him death is gain. What he loses of comfort here is made up to him a thousand fold by the joys of the hereafter. He knows that for him there is the crown of triumph and the palm branch of victory; for him the harp of ecstatic joy; for him the robe of immaculate purity; for him a place at the right hand of God, even the Father, in eternal security, and ineffable delight. Hence the Christian not only regards death as a necessity through which he hopes to be supported as a patient through a painful operation, but he looks for his departure as an heir looks forward to the day of his majority, as the bride anticipates her wedding day. It is the time when his manhood shall burst its shell, when his imprisoned soul shall snap its fetters, when what was long like a shrivelled seed shall bud and blossom, and bear sweet fruit in the garden of God. When he is in his right mind and his faith is in active exercise, he longs to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better. Endowed with such a longing, he becomes an apt pupil in the art of dying daily.

10. Once more, if a man would learn to die daily, it is necessary that he should have a good understanding, and a clear knowledge concerning what death really is, and what happens after it. Nothing is more becoming for our study than the departure of our souls from this mortal stage to the immortal glory. What is it to die? Is it to cease to be? If it were so, then indeed we should be idiotic to speak of dying daily. To die! is it to part with every comfort, and lose every joy? If it were so, and we had to be driven out from the body as naked spirits, homeless, restless, blown about by everlasting winds, we might indeed be excused if we shut our eyes to the dreary prospect. To die is nothing, but for the soul to be separated from the body, the body remaining to rest in the grave and moulder back to mother earth, the soul ascending to God who gave it, to be at once with Jesus, immediately in paradise, without the body, a disembodied spirit, naked for a time, but yet most sweetly blessed. To die is, in its subsequent consequences, to wait a little in a state of bliss, and then at the trump of the archangel to return to put on the body yet again—the very same body which was buried, the same in identity but marvellously changed—as changed as the flower from the seed, or the crocus with its golden cup from the unattractive bulb which was put into the soil. I say our souls shall come back to their bodies to a new marriage. The spirit and the body shall be knit together once again, so that our manhood shall be again entire, body, soul, and spirit, all being in glory even as we are here on earth, but far more gloriously developed. Believers in Christ know that the first resurrection delivers them from all fear of the second death. We shall reign with Christ upon the earth: a thousand years of glory shall be given to the saints; on this very same globe where they suffered with their Master they shall triumph with him. Then in the last time when Jesus shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father, then the people of God shall reign for ever and ever in unsurpassed and unimaginable delight. This it is, then, to die. There is nothing dreadful at all about it; it is altogether the very simplest of operations, although it involves afterwards the most wonderful of results. I suppose that to die is only a pin’s prick, or less than that. The pains which we call dying pains are really pains caused by life’s struggling to hold its own. Death gives us no pain whatever; it is the medicine that lulls us into a blessed slumber; it is the obstinate grasp of life within us which causes all the agony of separation; but as soon as life relaxes its stern grip, grief is ended. As for death, his hand is gentle and tender, and to those who know him his voice is musical and his countenance delightful.

11. Now, Christian, if you can have an intelligent view of what dying is, and a clear view of what will follow dying, you will then be able to learn to die daily, and by the grace of God you may even be able to achieve it, and every day before you have mingled with the din of this world’s turmoil, you may bathe in Jordan’s river, and be refreshed by it.

12. II. Secondly, IN WHAT DOES DYING DAILY CONSIST? Many things go to make up this high achievement.

13. The first is to consider with much care every day the certainty of death for all those who shall not remain at the coming of Christ, and to let the certainty of our own death or change go with us as an undivided companion. We ought always to feel that we are mortal; it should be to us a garment that we never shake off; the fact that we are here only as sojourners and wayfarers, should be painted on our eyes. We are never right hearted when we imagine that we are permanent inhabitants of this land. We are only strangers and sojourners in it; we are only right when we act as such. The Lord knowing that we should try to shake off the remembrance of death has so helped us as almost to force us to it. We have before us the frequent departures of others: the path to the cemetery is well trodden. It is well for us that we do not always live in the house of feasting: the grave’s brink is a healthier resort than the table of luxury. Remember how often you have seen strong men who appeared to be as likely to live as yourselves taken away in their strength! How often have we seen others sickening gradually before our eyes like slowly fading lilies! God rings the funeral knell in our ears, and asks us to remember that the bell may next toll for us. Our dying friends cast their shadows over us, and cool our worldly passions and madnesses. In the presence of the corpse we gather up our skirts, and gird up the loins of our mind, because as surely as the soul is gone from that lifeless body we too must follow. We have no lease on life, we have no earthly immortality guaranteed to us. Let us then remember the myriads who have marched before us; let us keep their track before our eye, feeling that we are wending our way to the very same goal.

14. All of nature around us also helps us to remember that we are mortal. Look at the year. It is born amid the songs of birds and the beauty of blooming flowers, it comes to its ripeness and luscious fruits and shouts of harvest home; but immediately the old age of autumn comes, and a lamentation is heard, “The harvest is passed and the summer is ended.” Amid the fall of decaying leaves, and the howling of the cold winds of winter the year finds its end. So too with every day. Well does Herbert sing—

      Sweet day, so calm, so bright,
   The bridal of the earth and sky,
   The dew must weep thy fall tonight,
      For thou must die.

15. Every flower we see lavishing its fragrance on the breeze, trembles because it hears the footsteps of death. It blooms so that it may wither; “Its root is always in its grave, and it must die.” Where do you see immortal things beneath the moon? Lift up your eyes, look where you may, do you not see everywhere change, and mutability, and departure, written upon nature’s brow! and all this God hangs up, as it were, as a notice upon the wall, like the mystical characters which amazed Belshazzar, so that we may not dare to forget that it is appointed to all men once to die. No, as if this were not all, not only is nature full of helps to make us familiar with the grave but our own bodies also tell us of our appointed change. What is that grey hair except the beginning, the first sign, the foretoken of the coming winter which shall freeze the life current within the vein and chill the heart itself? What is that loosened tooth except a part of the fabric crumbling to let us know that the whole tenement must soon come down? What are those aches and pains, and what is that decay of the eyesight, and that dullness of hearing, what are those tottering knees, and why is that staff there, except that we may receive clear warnings that the whole tabernacle is shaking in the rude winds of time, and must soon totter to its fall? The Lord will not allow us to win a freehold here, but he puts affliction into our family, and disease into our flesh, in order that we may seek after a better country, even a heavenly one. Let me exhort you then, beloved brethren in Christ, seeing you have all these mementoes, to keep the lamp of the sepulchre always burning in your chambers, and to be well acquainted with the shroud and the winding sheet. Every time you take off your clothes at night, think how you must be disrobed for your last narrow bed; and when you put on your garments in the morning, familiarise yourself with the time of the resurrection, when you shall put on your glittering garments, in which you are to rejoice for ever! Do not, I urge you, put aside these reflections because at first sight they may seem sombre. Familiarise yourself a little with the grey tints of death, and they will brighten before your eyes; and before long you will see a transcendent beauty in such meditations to which you would not be a stranger if you could. So the first part of dying daily is to think constantly of death.

16. The next part of dying daily is to put your soul, by faith, through the whole process of death. It is a wise thing to sit down quietly and to picture your departure. You need not stretch your imagination much. You have seen what happens to others; you can picture it for yourselves. There you lie upon that bed grown hard with weeks of weariness, and loving watchers whisper in the silent bedroom; they are anxious that you should not catch the sound, but your quick ear hears it, and you wistfully enquire, “What is it the physician says?” You gather, though they do not tell you, that you must soon depart. As a believer in Jesus you are glad to hear it. You have had enough of this world. You are like a child tired out with its day’s play, and you are glad to fall asleep upon your father’s breast. The solemn event seems nearer and nearer, the pulse is fainter, you have enough consciousness left to perceive that the eye is being glazed, and outward objects are lost; perhaps you have also enough strength to sing your last song, for heaven has met you while you are still here, and your soul is flooded with a joy you never knew before. You have evidently arrived at the borderland, for there are flowers beneath your feet, the like of which never bloomed in the wilderness, and you hear songs such as you never before heard in the desert. Then you yourself begin to sing. Perhaps it is some such song as this—

   And when ye hear my eye strings break,
      How sweet the minutes roll;
   A mortal paleness on my cheek,
      But glory in my soul.

or perhaps you burst out with a song concerning the new Jerusalem, “your happy home,” a name that is always dear to you, and rejoice that you are about to end your labours in the joy and peace which remains for the people of God. The solemn instant has come, but will you be able precisely to recognise it? May there not be so sweet a gradation from the earnest of the Spirit to the bliss itself that at no exact moment shall there be a wrench from time to eternity? All may be so divinely ordered that pilgrims may advance by degrees from the tabernacle of earth to the temple of heaven. There will be a matchless change, but it will not necessarily be a shock to the spirit; the folding gates of paradise may be opened by degrees, so that our eyes may be gradually prepared to endure the excessive glory. But while we linger, the spirit has mounted. Now, oh, joy of joys! you are in his bosom who loved you with an everlasting love. The hand that embraces you still wears the nail print, and as you bow to kiss those sacred feet, and cast the crown which has been placed upon your head before that Man, that God, you see that the feet are the feet of him who was nailed to the tree for you. What joy! what blessedness to see that your Father smiles upon you! The Spirit of God fills you and you know him, and you grieve him no more. The Son of God gives to you to partake in all his glory, for you are with him where he is. Now be sure that you rehearse such thoughts as these as though they were a sacred drama in which you are soon to take your part. Traverse the azure way. Plume your wings for the last solemn flight. Let faith like a courier march before to track the way. Every semblance of affectation upon deathbeds is shocking. I have never been able to admire the often quoted deathbed of Addison. “Come,” he said, “and see how a Christian can die.” It seems to me too much like bragging to be a fitting utterance for a soul humbly resting at the foot of the cross, and looking out over the black waters which fringe the eternal shore. The true idea of a Christian’s dying speech is a humble and gracious witness to those who look around, that though a sinner, he has found peace with God through the precious blood of Jesus, and would have others trust in the same Saviour. Prepare to deliver such a testimony. Often picture yourself as bidding adieu to every earthborn thing. Anticipate the final stroke, the upward mounting, the soaring through tracts unknown, the sight of the judgment throne, the eternal beautiful vision. So you will die daily.

17. But we have not come into the soul of the matter yet. The way to die daily, practically, is to hold this world with a very loose hand. Birdlime (a) abounds so much. When a man wins a little gain in this world it sticks to him, holds him, prevents his aspiring to heavenly things, and holds him bound to earth. Our dear friends, and our beloved children, are all strong chains, binding our eagle souls to the rock of earth. “Ah!” one said, as he was shown a rich man’s ample house and luxuriant gardens, “these are the things that make it hard to die”; and I suppose they are. When they are misused and wrongly applied, they become as birdlime to us; they hold us to the soil when we would gladly mount. But, brethren you must not be the servants of the present. Look on your lands as a dying man would look on them. Look on your children and the comforts of your fireside, and your little savings, as so much hoarfrost to vanish in the sun. Look on your hourly cares and daily joys as on things which perish in the using; mere visions of the night; things that flit away at the rising of the sun. You will never enjoy earth properly unless you know it to be a poor mutable thing. Earthliness eats as does a canker, and if you become so great a fool as to think that mortal things are eternal, or that you yourself will long endure, you will reserve for yourself many sorrows. Do you not see how the glittering dew drops exhale as the day grows old—such and so fleeting are human joys. See how the meteor marks the brow of night, and immediately is seen no more—such and so hasty is mortal bliss. Do not hold earth’s treasures with too firm a grasp. Give them all up to your Father, and use them as temporary comforts borrowed for awhile, to be returned immediately. Our bereavements would not be half so sharp if we always viewed our friends as being lent to us. A man does not cry when he has to return a tool which he has borrowed. No; but as an honest man, he knew he borrowed it; he never called it his own, and he hands it back, thankful that he has had it so long. When you weep, who have lost your friends, you do well; but if you carry that weeping to repining, you ought to remember the mercy of God in letting you retain these dear ones at all, and in sparing them for you for so long; and you should mourn that a rebellious spirit should so reign in you as to make you lament, because your God takes back his own. Gracious souls, rejoice to say, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” To die daily, then, is to hold this world with a loose hand, and to look upon earthly possessions as fickle joys.

18. To die daily, again, is to test our hope and our experience very solemnly every day. Alas! for that evil habit of taking our religion for granted, of looking back to some time a few years ago, and believing that we were then converted, and considering that it must be all right now because of something that happened then! Brethren, it is most mischievous to live in the past and to be afraid at any moment to try our faith by present tests. We may live on experience if we will use experience in its proper place, but any man who is afraid to search present evidences and to try the foundation of his faith before God today, is treating his soul most wretchedly. How would you like to die today, dear friend? Would you like to die with a hope too weak and tender to endure to be questioned? Can you enter into eternity with a hope that you dare not put into the crucible? Oh, no! you feel you need sure work when it comes to the last; you need a safe and stable foundation to build your soul upon in the trying moment. Well, then, beloved, see that your hope is stable now. Each day examine yourself whether you are in the faith; whether you have really repented of sin; whether you have actually and truly laid hold of Jesus Christ; search; see whether the root of the matter is in you, and the fruits of the Spirit proceeding from you, whether God dwells in you, whether you walk after the flesh or walk after the Spirit. I would not foment doubts and fears, but I would above all things press professors to avoid presumption. The man who is in a sound business does not object to take inventory and examine his books; but the man to whom bankruptcy is imminent generally seeks to shut his eyes to his actual position. Oh sirs, if you are right with God, you will desire to be quite sure, you will not flinch at heart searching preaching, you will be anxious to be put into the sieve and to be tried even as by fire; your prayer will be, “Cleanse me, oh God, from secret faults! search me and try me, and know my ways!” You will not be among those who hunt after prophets with smooth tongues, who prophesy in gentle strains. You will not desire to have your cradle rocked so that you may be lulled into presumption, but you will labour to make sure work for eternity, lest you suffer irreparable loss. Beloved, do this every day, look into the mirror of the word, and see what manner of men you are, and purge yourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit. Put yourself under the lash of the most severe texts of Scripture, and by all means labour so that you are not deceived, for God will not be mocked, but will deal with you according to fact.

19. To die daily, it will be necessary that you come every day, just as you did at conversion, to the cross of Christ, as a poor guilty sinner, and rest in him. I do not know anything that is more delightful, more necessary, or more profitable, than a renewal of the look of faith. I have always found, when I have been in fear concerning my safety, or have had harsh thoughts of death pressing heavily upon me, that my only resort has been a humble resort to the atonement. Carey ordered that they should write on his tombstone—

   A guilty, weak, and helpless worm,
      On Christ’s kind arms I fall;
   He is my strength and righteousness,
      My Jesus, and my all.

Here is an epitaph for each one of us. Just come with nothing of your own, no good feelings and no good works, fall before the cross of Jesus, and rest there. Take Jesus to be everything that God’s law and your conscience can require. I think, dear friends, this is the way to die daily; and if you can always live as an empty sinner filled with the fulness of Christ, as a lost sinner saved wholly by a precious Saviour, you are then fit to live and fit to die.

20. But I have not quite concluded. To die daily the Christian should take care to be always in such a place and state that he should not be ashamed to die in it. Hence, the possessor of faith in Jesus Christ has no licence to be found in places of ungodly and unclean amusement. How would he like to die there? The old story has it that the devil once carried off a very hopeful young man, hurrying him suddenly to hell. A monk of great saintliness called after the devil, “You have taken one of mine; you have no business with him!” “Well,” Satan said, “I found him in the theatre; he was on my premises, and I took him.” I should not wonder if many a professor is carried off in that manner. If professors of religion go astray into the haunts of iniquity, no wonder if they are shot at by that old hunter after souls. Where your treasure is there your heart is. Tell me where you go to find your amusement, and I will tell you what you are, for where a man finds his highest joy, there his heart most truly abides. It may serve you as a guide when you have to question yourself, “Ought I to do this, or to go to this or that place?” then ask yourself; “Should I be prepared to die in such company and in such an occupation?” If you could not, leave it alone; if you would, you may honestly go.

21. The Christian, also, should never be in a state of temper in which he would be ashamed to die. Who would like to die in a passion? You have no business to get into a passion at any time but to die daily. Thus the aim and goal of a Christian should be to keep himself in that delightfully equable frame of mind, in which he should be prepared at any moment to stand before his God in his present state of emotions and feelings. You say that is hard work: so it is, but you have a glorious helper—the Holy Spirit shall enable you, and by his power you may accomplish miracles of holiness.

22. To die daily, a Christian man should have all his affairs in such a condition that he is ready to die. I admire that habit in Whitfield, who was a man so very orderly that he would not go to bed at night until everything was in order, for he said, “I should not like to die with a pair of gloves out of place”; and yet I know some believers who have not made their wills, and if they were to die today, and they may, their property would go far otherwise than it ought to do, and a wife whom they love so well might be put to serious suffering. A Christian man has no right to leave his affairs in a tangle. If he does not care for the affairs of his own household, he is worse than a heathen man and a tax collector. Many business men keep their business transactions in such a confusion that if they were taken away, their very character might be impugned; but such should not be. We must set our house in order, for we must die, and not live. We should watch, because the Master comes as a thief, and a good servant would gladly have all things in good order at his Lord’s appearing.

23. So should it be with all our acts towards God. Some of you have not yet fulfilled the Master’s command with regard to baptism. Now, if you died unbaptized you would be saved, but still I am sure you would not wish to be taken away until you had fulfilled your Master’s bidding. Make haste, then, and do not delay to keep his commandments.

24. Some of you have dear children who are unconverted, and you have not spoken to them about their souls; now, if you were called this afternoon to sleep upon the bed of death, I am sure you would wish that you had delivered your soul fully to these dear ones. This afternoon, then, call them into your room and plead with them. A thousand other things may press upon your conscience, but you have been putting them off; attend to them, I urge you, at once, as a dying man should do. Who would wish to die with a duty left undone? I would like to depart when the day’s work is quite finished, my last sheaf reaped. I would desire to go home to my house when I have tended my corner of the vineyard, and pruned the vines, and cleaned my pruning knife, and put it in its place. It must be so delightful to feel, “It is all done; I may just go home, for I have fulfilled, as a hireling, my day.” It is said that that venerable divine, Watts Wilkinson, asked God that he might never know consciously what it was to die, and he died, as many of you will remember, in his sleep; so that his admission into heaven must have been almost without any recognition of death. In his case death was swallowed up in victory. Perhaps such an end may be given to us. I would choose so to die, so that I should have nothing to disturb my mind of matters left undone, but be found waiting and ready. If we are thus prepared, we have acquired the art of dying daily.

25. III. What would be THE PRACTICAL BENEFIT of such daily dying? It will help us to live well, and this is no small matter. We would not be covetous and grasping if we knew that the heap of possessions would soon melt or we should be taken from it. We should not be so impetuous, and attach so much importance to trifles, if we felt that there were grander things close at our heels. We should not be so obstinate, and take so long to be persuaded to do a Christian duty, if we felt that the time was short, and it behoved us to get much done in a little time. If we saw our candle flickering in its socket, we would be far more diligent. We would not be so grovelling and so earthly, if we saw that the world is founded on the floods, and therefore is utterly unstable. Next to living close to Christ, I do not know of any better prescription for overcoming worldly mindedness than this dying every day. He whose mind anticipates a departure to be with Jesus, is armed with weapons for warring a good warfare.

26. But notice, brethren, the best practical result is that it would help us to die. No man would find it difficult to die who died every day. He would have practised it so often, that he would only have to die just once more; like the singer who has been through his rehearsals, and is perfect in his part, and has only to pour out the notes once and for all, and be finished. Happy are those who every morning go down to Jordan’s brink, and wade into the stream in fellowship with Christ, dying in the Lord’s death, being crucified on his cross, and raised in his resurrection. They, when they shall climb their Pisgah, shall behold nothing except what has been long familiar to them, since they have studied the map of death.

27. I do not know how wide the benefits of dying daily may be, but they seem to me to be commensurate with the whole period of human existence. You young people, you would not be likely to plunge into youthful gaieties to your own detriment if you felt that you might die while you are still young. That wild oat sowing would never cause you a harvest of regrets if you felt that you might perish in the midst of sin. Graves are often short trenches for little prattlers. Beware, you boys and girls. You men of middle age, how it would check you in that eager pursuit after gold, that hastening to be rich which never leaves a man innocent, if you felt that it is a little matter after all to gain wealth since you must be parted from it so soon. And you who totter on a staff, I cannot conceive of anything which would keep you in a holier frame of mind, or in a happier and calmer state than to be always dying the death of Jesus so that you might live his life.

28. Put the Christian man in any position, and this art of dying daily will be useful to him. Is he rich? He will not be purse proud, because he knows that he must soon be removed from all his treasures. Is he poor? He will not murmur, for he remembers the streets of gold which are so soon to be his portion. This is useful for a Christian in all pursuits. If he is seeking after knowledge, as he may, he will add to it the knowledge of Christ crucified, for he knows that all else will not help him. If he is toiling for a livelihood, as he may and as he should, he will seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, because these things last when all else shall perish like faded leaves.

29. Make a believer a king or a pauper, and the art of dying daily will help him in either position; and whether he shall rule as a potentate, or smart as a slave, dying daily will be an equal benefit for his soul. Put him under every temptation, and this will help him, for he will not be tempted by the offers of so brief a happiness—his soul has a grip upon eternal realities, and it utterly despises vain shows. “See here, tempter,” he says, “I have a kingdom which cannot pass away; vain is your offer of the kingdoms of this world. See here, foul fiend, I have the beauty and the joy which never can fade: therefore do you tempt me with these vanities, these painted nothings?” The believer lifts his head above temptation’s billows with calm joy, because he breathes the atmosphere of heaven. Daily dying is as useful for the saint in his joys as in his griefs, in his exaltations as in his depressions. It is a blessed thing for him in the vale and on the mountain, in strength and in sickness, on the battlefield of activity or in the hospital of suffering. He shall be tutored for immortality, trained for bliss, outfitted for heaven, by learning to die daily.

30. May God teach us this art, and he shall have the glory for it. Amen.

[Portion Of Scripture Read Before Sermon—1 Corinthians 4:1-5:10]

(a) Birdlime: A glutinous substance spread upon twigs, by which birds may be caught and held firmly. OED.

(Page 490 in this sermon was duplicated in the EBS copy. Editor)