‘Our people die well’ said John Wesley. Wesley was celebrating God’s grace among the Methodists. Until recently a good death was seen as the godly man’s crowning achievement, the climax of his good life… Things are, of course, different today: death has replaced sex as the great unmentionable. All stress among Christians is laid on present knowledge and enjoyment of God, and the old awareness that only one who is ready to die can live to God’s praise has been generally forgotten.

- J.I. Packer in the foreword to David Watson, Fear No Evil, p. 5-6.