symbolic of the life to come. The first temple, the present life, must be
destroyed; on its foundations the second temple, the life eternal, must be
built.

But the mystical stone was placed by King Solomon in the foundations of
the first temple. That is to say, the first temple of our present life
must be built on the sure foundation of divine truth, "for other
foundation can no man lay."

But although the present life is necessarily built upon the foundation of
truth, yet we never thoroughly attain it in this sublunary sphere. The
Foundation Stone is concealed in the first temple, and the Master Mason
knows it not. He has not the true word. He receives only a substitute.

But in the second temple of the future life, we have passed from the
grave, which had been the end of our labors in the first. We have removed
the rubbish, and have found that Stone of Foundation which had been
hitherto concealed from our eyes. We now throw aside the substitute for
truth which had contented us in the former temple, and the brilliant
effulgence of the tetragrammaton and the Stone of Foundation are
discovered, and thenceforth we are the possessors of the true word--of
divine truth. And in this way, the Stone of Foundation, or divine truth,
concealed in the first temple, but discovered and brought to light in the
second, will explain that passage of the apostle, "For now we see through
a glass darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall
I know even as also I am known."

And so, the result of this inquiry is, that the masonic Stone of
Foundation is a symbol of divine truth, upon which all Speculative Masonry
is built, and the legends and traditions which refer to it are intended to
describe, in an allegorical way, the progress of truth in the soul, the
search for which is a Mason's labor, and the discovery of which is his
reward.

XXXI.

The Lost Word.

The last of the symbols, depending for its existence on its connection
with a myth to which I shall invite attention, is _the Lost Word, and the
search for it_. Very appropriately may this symbol terminate our
investigations, since it includes within its comprehensive scope all the
others, being itself the very essence of the science of masonic symbolism.
The other symbols require for their just appreciation a knowledge of the
origin of the order, because they owe their birth to its relationship with
kindred and anterior institutions. But the sym