their heart to wisdom, and sought for understanding as for hid
treasures:- this is a picture which sages and poets felt was true;
true for all men, and for all lands. And it will be, perhaps, looked
on as true once more, as natural, all but literally exact, when we
who are now men are in our graves, and you who are now boys will be
grown men; in the days when the present soulless mechanical notion of
the world and of men shall have died out, and philosophers shall see
once more that Wisdom is no discovery of their own, but the
inspiration of the Almighty; and that this world is no dead and dark
machine, but alight with the Glory, and alive with the Spirit, of
God.

But what has this allegory, however true, to do with All Saints' Day?

My dear boys, on all days Wisdom calls you to her feast, by many
weighty arguments, by many loving allurements, by many awful threats.
But on this day, of all the year, she calls you by the memory of the
example of those who sit already and for ever at her feast. By the
memory and example of the wise of every age and every land, she bids
you enter in and feast with them, on the wealth which she, and they,
her faithful servants, have prepared for you. They have laboured;
and they call you, in their mistress's name, to enter into their
labours. She taught them wisdom, and she calls on you to learn
wisdom of them in turn.

Remember, I say, this day, with humility and thankfulness of heart,
the wise who are gone home to their rest.

There are many kinds of noble personages amid the blessed company of
All Saints, whom I might bid you to remember this day. Some of you