to die well is to live well

I have been talking with Ernest about Amelia. "What do you think," I asked, "about her last days on earth? Was there really any preparation for her death?"

"These scenes are very painful," he returned. "Of course there is but one real preparation for Christian dying, and that is Christian living."

"But the sickroom often does what a prosperous life never did!"

"Not often. Sick persons delude themselves or are deluded by their friends; they do not believe they are really about to die. Besides, they are bewildered and exhausted by disease; and what mental strength they have is occupied with studying symptoms, watching for the doctor, and the like. I do not now recall a single instance where a worldly Christian died a happy, joyful death, in all my patience (sic)."

"Well, in one sense it makes no difference whether they die happily or not. The question is, do they die in the Lord?"

"It may make no vital difference to them; but we must not forget that God is honored or dishonored by the way a Christian dies as well as by the way in which he lives. There is great significance in the description given in the Bible of the death by which John should 'Glorify God' (John 21:19); to my mind it implies that to die well is to live well."

Elizabeth Prentiss, Stepping Heavenward, Barbour Publishing, Inc., 1998, p. 227