e occasionally
raised, he placed it over the opening of the uppermost arch, and so
covered it that the aperture could not be discovered. Enoch himself was
not permitted to enter it but once a year, and after the days of Enoch,
Methuselah, and Lamech, and the destruction of the world by the deluge,
all knowledge of the vault or subterranean temple, and of the Stone of
Foundation, with the sacred and ineffable name inscribed upon it, was lost
for ages to the world.

At the building of the first temple of Jerusalem, the Stone of Foundation
again makes its appearance. Reference has already been made to the Jewish
tradition that David, when digging the foundations of the temple, found in
the excavation which he was making a certain stone, on which the ineffable
name of God was inscribed, and which stone he is said to have removed and
deposited in the Holy of Holies. That King David laid the foundations of
the temple upon which the superstructure was subsequently erected by
Solomon, is a favorite theory of the legend-mongers of the Talmud.

The masonic tradition is substantiallv the same as the Jewish, but it
substitutes Solomon for David, thereby giving a greater air of probability
to the narrative; and it supposes that the stone thus discovered by
Solomon was the identical one that had been deposited in his secret vault
by Enoch. This Stone of Foundation, the tradition states, was subsequently
removed by King Solomon, and, for wise purposes, deposited in a secret and
safer place.

In this the masonic tradition again agrees with the Jewish, for we find in
the third chapter of the "_Treatise on the Temple_" written by the
celebrated Maimonides, the following narrative--

"There was a stone in the Holy of Holies, on its west side, on which was
placed the ark of the covenant, and before it the pot of manna and Aaron's
rod. But when Solomon had built the temple, and foresaw that it was, at
some future time, to be destroyed, he constructed a deep and winding vault
under ground, for the purpose of concealing the ark, wherein Josiah
afterwards, as we learn in the Second Book of Chronicles, xxxv. 3,
deposited it, with the pot of manna, the rod of Aaron, and the oil of
anointing."

The Talmudical book "_Yoma_" gives the same tradition, and says that "the
ark of the covenant was placed in the centre of the Holy of Holies, upon a
stone rising three fingers' breadth above the floor, to be, as it were, a
pedestal for it." "This ston