ost sacred,
and an altar of hewn stones was forbidden.[15] With the advent of the
cut cube, the temple became known as the House of the Hammer--its
altar, always in the center, being in the form of a cube and regarded
as "an index or emblem of Truth, ever true to itself."[16] Indeed, the
cube, as Plutarch points out in his essay _On the Cessation of
Oracles_, "is palpably the proper emblem of rest, on account of the
security and firmness of the superficies." He further tells us that
the pyramid is an image of the triangular flame ascending from a
square altar; and since no one knows, his guess is as good as any. At
any rate, Mercury, Apollo, Neptune, and Hercules were worshiped under
the form of a square stone, while a large black stone was the emblem
of Buddha among the Hindoos, of Manah Theus-Ceres in Arabia, and of
Odin in Scandinavia. Everyone knows of the Stone of Memnon in Egypt,
which was said to speak at sunrise--as, in truth, all stones spoke to
man in the sunrise of time.[17]

More eloquent, if possible, was the Pillar uplifted, like the pillars
of the gods upholding the heavens. Whatever may have been the origin
of pillars, and there is more than one theory, Evans has shown that
they were everywhere worshiped as gods.[18] Indeed, the gods
themselves were pillars of Light and Power, as in Egypt Horus and Sut
were the twin-builders and supporters of heaven; and Bacchus among the
Thebans. At the entrance of the temple of Amenta, at the door of the
house of Ptah--as, later, in the porch of the temple of Solomon--stood
two pillars. Still further back, in the old solar myths, at the
gateway of eternity stood two pillars--Strength and Wisdom. In India,
and among the Mayas and Incas, there were three pillars at the portals
of the earthly and skyey temple--Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty. When
man set up a pillar, he became a fellow-worker with Him whom the old
sages of China used to call "the first Builder." Also, pillars were
set up to mark the holy places of vision and Divine deliverance, as
when Jacob erected a pillar at Bethel, Joshua at Gilgal, and Samuel at
Mizpeh and Shen. Always they were symbols of stability, of what the
Egyptians described as "the place of establishing forever,"--emblems
of the faith "that the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and He
hath set the world upon them."[19]

Long before our era we find the working tools of the Mason used as
emblems of the very truths which they teach today. In