lready said, in the days of Enoch, who placed it in the bowels of
Mount Moriah. There it was subsequently discovered by King Solomon, who
deposited it in a crypt of the first temple, where it remained concealed
until the foundations of the second temple were laid, when it was
discovered and removed to the Holy of Holies. But the most important point
of the legend of the Stone of Foundation is its intimate and constant
connection with the tetragrammaton, or ineffable name. It is this name,
inscribed upon it, within the sacred and symbolic delta, that gives to the
stone all its masonic value and significance. It is upon this fact, that
it was so inscribed, that its whole symbolism depends.

Looking at these traditions in anything like the light of historical
narratives, we are compelled to consider them, to use the plain language
of Lee, "but as so many idle and absurd conceits." We must go behind the
legend, viewing it only as an allegory, and study its symbolism.

The symbolism of the Foundation Stone of Masonry is therefore the next
subject of investigation.

In approaching this, the most abstruse, and one of the most important,
symbols of the Order, we are at once impressed with its apparent
connection with the ancient doctrine of stone worship. Some brief
consideration of this species of religious culture is therefore necessary
for a proper understanding of the real symbolism of the Stone of
Foundation.

The worship of stones is a kind of fetichism, which in the very infancy
of religion prevailed, perhaps, more extensively than any other form of
religious culture. Lord Kames explains the fact by supposing that stones
erected as monuments of the dead became the place where posterity paid
their veneration to the memory of the deceased, and that at length the
people, losing sight of the emblematical signification, which was not
readily understood, these monumental stones became objects of worship.

Others have sought to find the origin of stone-worship in the stone that
was set up and anointed by Jacob at Bethel, and the tradition of which had
extended into the heathen nations and become corrupted. It is certain that
the Phoenicians worshipped sacred stones under the name of _Baetylia_,
which word is evidently derived from the Hebrew _Bethel_; and this
undoubtedly gives some appearance of plausibility to the theory.

But a third theory supposes that the worship of stones was derived from
the unskilfulness of the pr