Charles H. Spurgeon on Psalms 116:15

Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints. It is of value or importance in such respects as the following: —(1) As it is the removal of another of the redeemed to glory —the addition of one more to the happy hosts above; (2) as it is a new triumph of the work of redemption, —allowing the power and the value of that work; (3) as it often furnishes a more direct proof of the reality of religion than any abstract argument could do. How much has the cause of religion been promoted by the patient deaths of Ignatius, Polycarp, and Latimer, and Ridley, and Huss, and Jerome of Prague, and the hosts of martyrs! What does not the world owe, and the cause of religion owe, to such scenes as occurred on the deathbeds of Baxter, and Thomas Scott, and Halyburton, and Payson! What an argument for the truth of religion, —what an illustration of its sustaining power, —what a source of comfort to those who are about to die, —to reflect that religion does not leave the believer when he most needs its support and consolation; that it can sustain us in the severest trial of our condition here; that it can illuminate what seems to us of all places most dark, cheerless, dismal, repulsive —"the valley of the shadow of death." Albert Barnes.