At a time when death is all around us, when so many of our nearest and dearest and best may pass at any moment through the shadow of death to the judgment which is beyond, it is of infinite comfort to be assured by this Divine message that they pass, not to a severe tribunal which will judge them by the letter of the law, and by a strict estimate of their faults, but to this gracious and merciful throne of their Brother, their Advocate, and their Redeemer, Who will judge them with infinite mercy and equity. I do not hesitate to say that He will judge them with peculiar sympathy, because they have died in the very cause in which He died Himself, and which it is His office as a judge to maintain--the cause of righteousness. In the ancient Church, martyrdom was regarded as ensuring remission of sins and absolution. Soldiers, no doubt, would feel that it would be putting their case too high to place their sacrifice of their lives in the cause of their King and country, in a war like this, on quite the same level as the heroic martyrdom of the great Saints of old. But it is a sacrifice of the same nature. It is coloured by the virtue of the sacrifice of Christ Himself, and of His followers; and we may confidently be assured that those who meet their death on the battlefields of this war in the spirit of faith in Christ, and in simple devotion to duty, will be received by Him in the sense of those gracious words, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” and may hope to be admitted in some degree into the joy of their Lord. According to the judgment of the ancient Church, and the greatest of our own Divines, we may confidently bear the memories of them in our prayers before that Throne of gracious judgment--not presuming to know, or desiring to know, more than this, that they are in the hands of One Who is at once a Judge and a Saviour, and trusting that, in praying for His gracious and merciful reception of them, we are but giving expression to the yearnings of His own Divine and Human Heart.