Section 10

The necessary preparations, then, having been made
in the first degree, the lessons having been received by
which the aspirant is taught to commence the labor of
life with the purification of the heart, as a Fellow Craft
he continues the task by cultivating those virtues which
give form and impression to the character, as well
adapted stones give shape and stability to the building.
And hence the "working tools" of the Fellow Craft are

' It must be remarked, however, that many of the Fellow Crafts
were also stone cutters in the mountains, chotzeb halioTy and, with
their nicer implements, more accurately adjusted the stones which
had been imperfectly prepared by the Apprentices. This fact does
not at all affect the character of the symboUsm we are describing.
The due preparation of the materials, the symbol of purifi(;ation,
was necessarily continued in all the degrees. The task of purifica-
tion never ceases.

96 Symbolism of Freemasonry

referred, in their symbolic application, to those virtues.

In the alphabet of symbolism, we find the square, the
level, and the plumb appropriated to this second de-
gree. The square is a symbol denoting morality. It
teaches us to apply the unerring principles of moral
science to every action of our lives, to see that all the
motives and results of our conduct shall coincide with
the dictates of divine justice, and that all our thoughts,
words, and deeds shall harmoniously conspire, like the
well-adjusted and rightly-squared joints of an edifice,
to produce a smooth, unbroken life of virtue.

The plumb is a symbol of rectitude of conduct, and
teaches that integrity of life and undeviating course of
moral uprightness which can alone distinguish the good
and just man. As the operative workman erects his
temporal building with strict observance of that plumb-
line, which will not permit him to deviate a hair's
breadth to the right or to the left, so the Speculative
Freemason, guided by the unerring principles of right
and truth taught in the symbolic teachings of the same
implement, is steadfast in the pursuit of truth, neither
bending beneath the frowns of adversity nor yielding to
the seductions of prosperity.^

*The classical reader will here be reminded of that beautiful
passage of Horace, commencing with "Justum et tenacem pro-
positi virum." — "Lib." iii. od. 3. See the following translation:
He that is just and firm of will,

Doth not before the fury quake
Of mobs that instigate to ill.

Nor hath the tyrant's menace skill
His fixed resolve to shake.
Nor Auster at whose wild command

The Adriatic billows dash,
Nor Jove's dread thunder-launching hand —
Yea, if the globe should fall, he'll stand
Serene amid the crash.

Symbolism of Solomon's Temple 97

The level, the last of the three working tools of the
operative craftsman, is a symbol of equality of station.
Not that equality of civil or social position which is to
be found only in the vain dreams of the anarchist or the
Utopian, but that great moral and physical equality
which affects the whole human race as the children of
one common Father, who causes His sun to shine and
His rain to fall on all alike, and Who has so appointed
the universal lot of humanity, that death, the leveller
of all human greatness, is made to visit with equal pace
the prince's palace and the peasant's hut.^

Here, then, we have three more signs or hieroglyphics
added to our alphabet of symbolism. Others there are
in this degree, but they belong to a higher grade of
interpretation, and cannot be appropriately discussed
in an essay on temple symbolism only.

We now reach the third degree and shall consider the
Master Masons of the modern science, and the Epopts,
or beholders of the sacred things in the ancient Mysteries.

In the third degree the symbolic allusions to the
temple of Solomon, and the implements of Freemasonry
employed in its construction, are extended and fully
completed. At the building of that edifice, we have
already seen that one class of the workmen was em-
ployed in the preparation of the materials, while another
was engaged in placing those materials in their proper
position. But there was a third and higher class — the
master workmen — whose duty it was to superintend
the two other classes, and to see that the stones were
not only duly prepared, but that the most exact accur-
acy had been observed in giving to them their true
juxtaposition in the edifice. It was then only that the

* "Pallida mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas Regum-
que turres." — Horace, lib. i. od. 4.

98 Symbolism of Freemasonry

last and finishing labor^ was performed, and the cement
was appHed by these skillful workmen, to secure the
materials in their appropriate places, and to unite the
building in one enduring and connected mass.

Hence the trowel, we are informed, was the most im-
portant, though of course not the only, implement in
use among the master builders. They did not permit
this last, indelible operation to be performed by any
hands less skillful than their own. They required that
the craftsmen should prove the correctness of their
work by the square, level, and plumb, and test by these
unerring instruments the accuracy of their joints; and
when satisfied of the just arrangement of every part,
the cement, which was to give an unchangeable union
to the whole, was then applied by themselves.

Therefore, in Speculative Freemasonry, the trowel
has been assigned to the third degree as its proper im-
plement, and the symbolic meaning which accompanies
it has a strict and beautiful reference to the purposes
for which it was used in the ancient temple. As it was
there employed "to spread the cement which united
the building in one common mass," so is it selected as
the symbol of brotherly love — that cement whose
object is to unite our mystic association in one sacred
and harmonious band of brethren.

^ It is worth noticing that the verb natzach, from which the title
of the menatzchim (the overseers or Master Masons in the ancient
temple) is derived, signifies also in Hebrew to he perfected, to be
completed. The third degree is the perfection of the symbolism
of the temple, and its lessons lead us to the completion of life. In
like manner the Mysteries, says Christie, "were termed reXeral,
perfections, because they were supposed to induce a perfectness of
life. Those who were purified by them were styled TeXov/xepoi, and
TereXeaneuoL, that is, brought to perfection." — "Observations on
Ouvaroff's Essay on the Eleusinian Mysteries," p. 183.

Symbolism of Solomon's Temple 99

Here, then, we perceive the first, or, as we have al-
ready called it, the elementary form of our symbolism —
adaptation of the terms, and implements, and processes
of an operative art to a speculative science. The
temple is now completed. The stones having been
hewed, squared, and numbered in the quarries by the
apprentices — having been properly adjusted by the
craftsmen, and finally secured in their appropriate
places, with the strongest and purest cement, by the
master builders — the temple of King Solomon pre-
sented, in its finished condition, so noble an appearance
of sublimity and grandeur as to well deserve to be
selected, as it has been, for the type of symbol of that
immortal temple of the body, to which Christ signifi-
cantly and symbolically alluded in saying, "Destroy
this temple, and in three days I will raise it up."

This idea of representing the interior and spiritual
man by a material temple is so apposite in all its parts
as to have occurred on more than one occasion to the
first teachers of Christianity. Christ repeatedly alludes
to it in other passages, and the eloquent and figurative
St. Paul beautifully extends the idea in one of his
Epistles to the Corinthians, in the following language:
"Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that
the spirit of God dwelleth in you?" In a subsequent
passage of the same Epistle, he reiterates the idea in a
more positive form: "What, know ye not that your
body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you,
which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?"

Dr. Adam Clarke, while commenting on this latter
passage, makes the very allusions which have been the
topic of discussion in the present essay. "As truly,"
says he, "as the living God dwelt in the Mosaic taber-
nacle and in the temple of Solomon, so truly does the

100 Symbolism of Freemasonry

Holy Ghost dwell in the souls of genuine Christians;
and as the temple and all its utensils were holy, sepa-
rated from all common and profane uses, and dedicated
alone to the service of God, so the bodies of genuine
Christians are holy, and should be employed in the
service of God alone.''

The idea, therefore, of making the temple a symbol
of the body, is not exclusively Masonic; but the mode
of treating the symbolism by a reference to the par-
ticular temple of Solomon, and to the operative art
engaged in its construction, is peculiar to Freemasonry.
It is this which isolates it from all other similar asso-
ciations. Having many things in common with the
secret societies and religious Mysteries of antiquity, in
this ^^temple symbolism" it differs from them all.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

FOKM OF THE LODGE

IN the last essay, we treated of that symbolism of
the Masonic system which makes the temple of
Jerusalem the archetype of a Lodge, and in which,
in consequence, all the symbols are referred to the
connection of a speculative science with an operative
art. We propose at present to discourse of a higher
and even abstruse mode of symbolism. It may be
observed that in coming to this topic, we arrive for the
first time at that chain of resemblances which unites
Freemasonry with the ancient systems of religion, and
which has given rise, among Masonic writers, to the
names of Pure and Spurious Freemasonry.

We understand the pure Freemasonry as being that sys-
tem of philosophical religion which, coming through the
line of the patriarchs, was eventually modified by influen-
ces exerted at the building of King Solomon's temple, and
the spurious being the same system as it was altered and
corrupted by the polytheism of the nations of heathendom.*

As this deeper mode of symbolism, if less peculiar to
the Masonic system, is, however, far more interesting
than the one which was treated in the previous essay —

* Dr. Oliver, in the first or preliminary lecture of his "Historical
Landmarks," accurately describes the difference between the pure
or primitive Freemasonry of the Noachites, and the spurious Free-
masonry of the heathens.

101

102 Symbolism of Freemasonry

because it is more philosophical — we propose to give an
extended investigation of its character. In the first
place, there is what may be called an elementary view of
this abstruse symbolism, which seems almost to be a
necessary consequence to what has already been de-
scribed in the preceding article.

As each individual Freemason has been supposed to
be the symbol of a spiritual temple — "a temple not
made with hands, eternal in the heavens" — the Lodge
or collected assemblage of these brethren is adopted as
a symbol of the world.

The idea of the world, as symbolically representing
God's temple, has been thus beautifully developed in a
hymn by N. P. Willis, written for the dedication of a
church:

The perfect world by Adam trod

Was the first temple built by God;

His fiat laid the corner stone,

And heaved its pillars, one by one.

He hung its starry roof on high —

The broad, illimitable sky;

He spread its pavement, green and bright,

And curtained it with morning light.

The mountains in their places stood,
The sea, the sky, and **all was good;"
And when its first pure praises rang,
The "morning stars together sang."

Lord, 'tis not ours to make the sea,
And earth, and sky, a house for Thee;
But in Thy sight our offering stands,
A humbler temple, made with hands.

It is in the first degree of Freemasonry, more particu-
larly, that this species of symbolism is developed. In its
details it derives the characteristics of resemblance upon
which it is founded, from the form, the supports, the orna-
ments, and general construction and internal organization

Form of the Lodge 103

of a Lodge, in all of which the symbolic reference to the
world is beautifully and consistently sustained.

The form of a Masonic Lodge is said to be a parallelo-
gram, or oblong square; its greatest length being from
east to west, its breadth from north to south. A square,
a circle, a triangle, or any other form but that of an oblong
square, would be eminently incorrect and un-Masonic, be-
cause such a figure would not be an expression of the
symbolic idea which is intended to be conveyed.

Now, as the world is a globe, or, to speak more accu-
rately, an oblate spheroid, the attempt to make an
oblong square its symbol would seem, at first view, to
present insuperable difficulties. But the system of
Masonic symbolism has stood the test of too long an
experience to be easily found at fault; and therefore
this very symbol furnishes a striking evidence of the
antiquity of the order.

At the Solomonic era — the era of the building of the
temple at Jerusalem — the world, it must be remem-
bered, was supposed to have that very oblong form,^
which has been here symbolized. If, for instance, on a
map of the world we should inscribe an oblong figure
whose boundary lines would circumscribe and include
just that portion which was known to be inhabited in
the days of Solomon, these lines, running a short dis-
tance north and south of the Mediterranean Sea, and
extending from Spain in the west to Asia Minor in the
east, would form an oblong square, including the
southern shore of Europe, the northern shore of Africa,

1 "The idea," says Dudley, "that the earth is a level surface,
and of a square form, is so likely to have been entertained by per-
sons of little experience and limited observation, that it may be
justly supposed to have prevailed generally in the early ages of the
world."— "Naology," p. 7.

104

Symbolism of Freemasonry

and the western district of Asia, the length of the parallel-
ogram being about sixty degrees from east to west, and its
breadth being about twenty degrees from north to south.

NORTH.

CO

SOUTH.

This oblong square, thus enclosing the whole of what
was then supposed to be the habitable globe, ^ would
precisely represent what is symbolically said to be the
form of the lodge, while the Pillars of Hercules in the
west, on each side of the straits of Gades or Gibraltar,
might appropriately be referred to the two pillars that
stood at the porch of the temple.

A Masonic Lodge is therefore to the instructed
brethren a symbol of the world and is sometimes ex-
tended by a figure of speech. Then the world and
the universe are made synonymous, when the Lodge be-

^ The quadrangular form of the earth is preserved in almost all
the scriptural allusions that are made to it. Thus Isaiah (xi. 12)
says, "The Lord shall gather together the dispersed of Judah from
the /our corners of the earth"; and we find in the "Apocalypse" (xx.
9) the prophetic version of "four angels standing on the four corners
of the earth."

Form of the Lodge 105

comes, of course, a symbol of the universe. But in this
case the definition of the symbol is extended, and to the
ideas of length and breadth are added those of height and
depth, and the Lodge is said to assume the form of a dou-
ble cube.^ The solid contents of the earth below and the
expanse of the heavens above will then give the outlines
of the cube, and the whole created universe^ will be in-
cluded within the symbolic limits of a Freemason's Lodge.

By always remembering that the Lodge is the symbol
in its form and extent of the world, we are enabled
readily and rationally to explain many other symbols,
attached principally to the first degree. We are en-
abled to collate and compare these symbols with similar
ones of other kindred institutions of antiquity, for it
should be observed that this symbolism of the world,
represented by a place of initiation, widely pervaded all
the ancient rites and mysteries.

It will, no doubt, be interesting to extend our in-
vestigations on this subject, with a particular view to
the method in which this symbolism of the world or
the universe was developed, in some of its most promi-
nent details. For this purpose we shall select the
mystical explanation of the officers of a Lodge, its cov-
ering, and a portion of its ornaments.

* "The form of the lodge ought to be a double cube, as an ex-
pressive emblem of the powers of darkness and light in the crea-
tion."— Oliver, "Landmarks," i. p. 135, note 37.

2 Not that whole visible universe, in its modern Bignification,
including solar systems upon solar systems, rolling in illimitable
space, but in the more contracted view of the ancients, where the
earth formed the floor, and the sky the ceiling. "To the vulgar
and untaught eye," says Dudley, "the heaven or sky above the
earth appears to be co-extensive with the earth, and to take the
same form, enclosing a cubical space, of which the earth was the
base, the heaven or sky the upper surface." — "Naology," 7. And
to this idea of the universe the Masonic symbol of the Lodge refers.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Officers of a Lodge