elling
Freemasons, whether led into the error, if error it be, by a mistaken
reading of history, or by a superstitious reverence for tradition, always
esteemed King Solomon as the founder of their Order. So that the first
absolutely historical details that we have of the masonic institution,
connect it with the idea of a temple. And it is only for this idea that I
contend, for it proves that the first Freemasons of whom we have authentic
record, whether they were at Jerusalem or in Europe, and whether they
flourished a thousand years before or a thousand years after the birth of
Christ, always supposed that temple building was the peculiar specialty of
their craft, and that their labor was to be the erection of temples in
ancient times, and cathedrals and churches in the Christian age.

So that we come back at last to the proposition with which I had
commenced, namely: that temple building was the original occupation of our
ancient brethren. And to this is added the fact, that after a long lapse
of centuries, a body of men is found in the middle ages who were
universally recognized as Freemasons, and who directed their attention and
their skill to the same pursuit, and were engaged in the construction of
cathedrals, abbeys, and other sacred edifices, these being the Christian
substitute for the heathen or the Jewish temple.

And therefore, when we view the history of the Order as thus developed in
its origin and its design, we are justified in saying that, in all times
past, its members have been recognized as men of labor, and that their
labor has been temple building.

But our ancient brethren wrought in both operative and speculative
Masonry, while we work only in speculative. They worked with the hand; we
work with the brain. They dealt in the material; we in the spiritual.
They used in their labor wood and stones; we use thoughts, and feelings,
and affections. We both devote ourselves to labor, but the object of the
labor and the mode of the labor are different.

The French rituals have given us the key-note to the explanation of what
is masonic labor when they say that "Freemasons erect temples for virtue
and dungeons for vice."

The modern Freemasons, like the Masons of old, are engaged in the
construction of a temple;--but with this difference: that the temple of
the latter was material, that of the former spiritual. When the operative
art was the predominant characteristic of the Order, Masons were engaged