Meditations on the Future Life

In his Institutes Calvin devotes a chapter (3.9) to the "Meditation on the Future Life." I believe this to be one of the sweetest sections of the work and quite an appropriate follow-up to the chapter on suffering (i.e. cross bearing). Speaking of those adversities we face Calvin says,

Since God knows best how much we are inclined by nature to a brutish love of this world, he uses the fittest means to draw us back and to shake off our sluggishness, lest we cleave too tenaciously to that love... For it is a shame for us to [think ourselves] no better than brute beasts, whose condition would be no whit inferior to our own if there were not left to us hope of eternity after death.

In fine, the whole soul, enmeshed in the allurements of the flesh, seeks its happiness on earth. To counter this evil the Lord instructs his followers in the vanity of the present life by continual proof of its miseries. (3.9.1)

Calvin compares this life to a sentry post "at which the Lord has posted us, which we must hold until he recalls us." (3.9.4) Even though the life to come is far better, our time to go there must be left to the Lord. So taking our own life in suicide is considered going AWOL. But, to the other extreme, Calvin has no tolerance for those who fear death.

But monstrous is that many who boast themselves Christians are gripped by such a great fear of death, rather than a desire for it, that they tremble at the least mention of it, as of something utterly dire and disastrous...

Let us, however, consider this settled: that one one has made progress in the school of Christ who does not joyfully await the day of death and final resurrection. (3.9.5)