My dear boys, take this one thought away with you from this chapel
to-day. Believe that the wise and good of every age and clime are
looking down on you, to see what use you will make of the knowledge
which they have won for you. Whether they laboured, like Kepler in
his garret, or like Galileo in his dungeon, hid in God's tabernacle
from the strife of tongues; or, like Socrates and Plato, in the whirl
and noise--far more wearying and saddening than any loneliness--of
the foolish crowd, they all have laboured for you. Let them rejoice,
when they see you enter into their labours with heart and soul. Let
them rejoice, when they see in each one of you one of the fairest
sights on earth, before men and before God; a docile and innocent boy
striving to become a wise and virtuous man.
And whenever you are tempted to idleness and frivolity; whenever you
are tempted to profligacy and low-mindedness; whenever you are
tempted--as you will be too often in these mean days--to join the
scorners and the fools whom Solomon denounced; tempted to sneering
unbelief in what is great and good, what is laborious and self-
sacrificing, and to the fancy that you were sent into this world
merely to get through it agreeably;--then fortify and ennoble your
hearts by Solomon's vision. Remember who you are, and where you are-
-that you stand before the Temple of Wisdom, of the science of things
as God has made them; wherein alone is health and wealth for body and
for soul; that from within the Heavenly Lady calls to you, sending
forth her handmaidens in every art and science which has ever
ministered to the good of man; and that within there await you all
the wise and good who have ever taught on earth, that you may enter
in and partake of the feast which their mistress taught them to
prepare.
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