of man; from which point it is not difficult to
pass on to the moral meaning altogether, and to affirm that the building
which was erected without 'the noise of a hammer or axe, or any tool of
iron,' was altogether a moral building--a building of God, not made with
hands: in short, many see in the story of Solomon's temple a symbolical
representation of MAN as the temple of God, with its _holy of holies_
deep-seated in the centre of the human heart." [205]

The French Masons have not been inattentive to this symbolism. Their
already quoted expression that the "Freemasons build temples for virtue
and dungeons for vice," has very clearly a reference to it, and their most
distinguished writers never lose sight of it.

Thus Ragon, one of the most learned of the French historians of
Freemasonry, in his lecture to the Apprentice, says that the founders of
our Order "called themselves Masons, and proclaimed that they were
building a temple to truth and virtue." [206] And subsequently he
addresses the candidate who has received the Master's degree in the
following language:--

"Profit by all that has been revealed to you. Improve your heart and your
mind. Direct your passions to the general good; combat your prejudices;
watch over your thoughts and your actions; love, enlighten, and assist
your brethren; and you will have perfected that _temple_ of which you are
at once the _architect_, the _material_, and the _workman_." [207]

Rebold, another French historian of great erudition, says, "If Freemasonry
has ceased to erect temples, and by the aid of its architectural designs
to elevate all hearts to the Deity, and all eyes and hopes to heaven, it
has not therefore desisted from its work of moral and intellectual
building;" and he thinks that the success of the institution has justified
this change of purpose and the disruption of the speculative from the
operative character of the Order.[208]

Eliphas Levi, who has written abstrusely and mystically on Freemasonry and
its collateral sciences, sees very clearly an allegorical and a real
design in the institution, the former being the rebuilding of the temple
of Solomon, and the latter the improvement of the human race by a
reconstruction of its social and religious elements.[209]

The Masons of Germany have elaborated this idea with all the
exhaustiveness that is peculiar to the German mind, and the masonic
literature of that country abounds in essays, lectures, and treatise