t were a substantial reality; and hence, if the
passages in his "Historical Landmarks," and in his other works which refer
to this celebrated stone are accepted by his readers in a literal sense,
they will present absurdities and puerilities which would not occur if the
Stone of Foundation was received, as it really is, as a philosophical
myth, conveying a most profound and beautiful symbolism. Read in this
spirit, as all the legends of Masonry should be read, the mythical story
of the Stone of Foundation becomes one of the most important and
interesting of all the masonic symbols.

The Stone of Foundation is supposed, by the theory which establishes it,
to have been a stone placed at one time within the foundations of the
temple of Solomon, and afterwards, during the building of the second
temple, transported to the Holy of Holies. It was in form a perfect cube,
and had inscribed upon its upper face, within a delta or triangle, the
sacred tetragrammaton, or ineffable name of God. Oliver, speaking with the
solemnity of an historian, says that Solomon thought that he had rendered
the house of God worthy, so far as human adornment could effect, for the
dwelling of God, "when he had placed the celebrated Stone of Foundation,
on which the sacred name was mystically engraven, with solemn ceremonies,
in that sacred depository on Mount Moriah, along with the foundations of
Dan and Asher, the centre of the Most Holy Place, where the ark was
overshadowed by the shekinah of God." [217] The Hebrew Talmudists, who
thought as much of this stone, and had as many legends concerning it as
the masonic Talmudists, called it _eben shatijah_[218] or "Stone of
Foundation," because, as they said, it had been laid by Jehovah as the
foundation of the world; and hence the apocryphal book of Enoch speaks of
the "stone which supports the corners of the earth."

This idea of a foundation stone of the world was most probably derived
from that magnificent passage of the book of Job, in which the Almighty
demands of the afflicted patriarch,--

"Where wast thou, when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Declare, since thou hast such knowledge!
Who fixed its dimensions, since thou knowest?
Or who stretched out the line upon it?
Upon what were its foundations fixed?
And who laid its corner-stone,
When the morning stars sang together,
And all the sons of God shouted for joy?" [219]

Noyes, whose beautiful translation I