Certainty of Death

Thos. Spurgeon.

Hebrews 9:27-28

And as it is appointed to men once to die, but after this the judgment:…

A good old man who used to go about doing good in the Tasmanian "bush" stood, shortly before his death, in a small country place of worship to preach the gospel. In the course of his simple address he pulled out a large watch which had long been his faithful companion. "This watch of mine," said he, "has been going for many years — tick, tick, tick. It is one of the old-fashioned sort and a real trusty one, but it stopped the other day, and has refused to go again. Now, I have lived to old age, healthy and well for the most part: my heart has been beating and my pulse throbbing — tick, tick, tick — "very much like the watch; but I shall stop some day, and be numbered with the dead." From the way in which the earnest pastor uttered those words, his little congregation knew he spake as a dying man to dying men, and that he realised that he was as likely to go as any. Hence the power which accompanied the exhortation that followed.

(Thos. Spurgeon.)