Hosea 4:6. My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge

I was preaching in Essex but a few months ago, and the sermon was scarcely finished, when a Christian woman, who was hearing it, dropped dead in her pew. It was but a little while ago, in Kent, that during a sermon, a poor man who had bent forward, and listened with all his ears, fell forward on his face, and then and there appeared before his God. Sudden deaths are not such common things as perpetually to keep us in alarm, yet they are common enough, I hope, to make both young and old arise and hear the voice of God--“Prepare, prepare, to meet your God.” Oh! my hearers, it is but a short time with the very longest lived amongst us. I see here and there a hoary head. Is that grey hair yonder a crown of glory or a fool’s cap? It is either the one or the other. There are young persons here too, O let them look forward to the longest time that we may live, and how brief the period! Time--how short! Eternity--how long! Well, since die we must, I do beseech and intreat you to think of death. Why should all your time be spent in thinking of the things of this world, when there is another world beyond the present? Why, why, is this short life to have all your thoughts, and the life to come to have none of them? I have heard of a monarch who, having a fool in his court, gave him a walking-stick, with an injunction never to part with it, until he should meet with a bigger fool than himself. He kept it for many a day, until at last, the monarch dying, the fool (who was a wise man, after all) came, and said, “Master, where are you going?” “Well,” said he, “I am going to die.” Said the fool, “How long are you going to be there? Oh!” said the monarch, “for ever and ever.” “And have you not made any preparation for the journey; have you no house to live in when you get there; have you nothing ready?” said the fool. “No,” said the monarch, “I never thought of it.” “There,” said the fool, “take the walkingstick; I play the fool in this world, but you have fooled away the next: you have entirely neglected the world to come, and are a fool in very deed.” And is not that the English after all of what those men are who are so careless of the world to come? ( C. H. Spurgeon. )