are the sons of statesmen or lawyers. I might call on you to thank
God for your fathers, and for every man who has helped to make or
execute wise laws. Some of you are the sons of soldiers. I might
call on you to thank God for your fathers, and for all who have
fought for duty and for their country's right. Some of you are the
sons of clergymen. I might call on you to thank God for your
fathers, and for all who have preached the true God and Jesus Christ
His only-begotten Son, whether at home or abroad. All of you have
mothers, whether on earth or in heaven; I might call on you to thank
God for them, and for every good and true woman who, since the making
of the world, has raised the coarseness and tamed the fierceness of
men into gentleness and reverence, purity, and chivalry. I might do
this: but to-day I will ask you to remember specially--The Wise.

For you are here as scholars; you are here to learn wisdom; you are
here in what should be, and I believe surely is, one of the fore-
courts of that mystic Temple into which Wisdom calls us all. And
therefore it is fit that you should this day remember the wise; for
they have laboured, and you are entering into their labours. Every
lesson which you learn in school, all knowledge which raises you
above the savage or the profligate (who is but a savage dressed in
civilized garments), has been made possible to you by the wise.
Every doctrine of theology, every maxim of morals, every rule of
grammar, every process of mathematics, every law of physical science,
every fact of history or of geography, which you are taught here, is
a voice from beyond the tomb. Either the knowledge itself, or other
knowledge which led to it, is an heirloom to you from men whose
bodies are now mouldering in the dust, but whose spirits live for
ever before God, and whose works follow them, going on, generation
after generation, upon the path which they trod while they were upon