ers,--the
temple of King Solomon presented, 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 or symbol of that immortal temple of the body,
to which Christ significantly and symbolically alluded when he said,
"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 himself
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?" And again, 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?" And
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 tabernacle and
in the temple of Solomon, so truly does the Holy Ghost dwell in the souls
of genuine Christians; and as the temple and all its _utensils_ were holy,
separated 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 particular 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 associations. Having many things in common with the
secret societies and religious Mysteries of antiquity, in this "temple
symbolism" it differs from them all.

XIII.

The Form of the Lodge.

In the last essay, I 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. I propose in the present to
discourse of