“With, perhaps, the majority of readers, the Tabernacle of Moses and the Temple of Solomon were mere buildings; very magnificent indeed, but still mere buildings for the worship of God.  But some are struck with many portions of the account of their erection, admitting a moral interpretation; and while the buildings are allowed to stand (or to have stood once) visible objects, these interpreters are delighted to meet with indications that Moses and Solomon, in building the temples, were wise in the knowledge of God and 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 treatises, in which the prominent topic is this building of the Solomonic temple as referring to the construction of a moral temple.