But this masonic idea is still further to be extended.  The great object of all Masonic labor is divine truth.  The search for the lost word is the search for truth.  But divine truth is a term synonymous with God.  The ineffable name is a symbol of truth, because God, and God alone, is truth.  It is properly a scriptural idea.  The Book of Psalms abounds with this sentiment.  Thus it is said that the truth of the Lord “reacheth unto the clouds,” and that “his truth endureth unto all generations.”  If, then, God is truth, and the Stone of Foundation is the masonic symbol of God, it follows that it must also be the symbol of divine truth.

When we have arrived at this point in our speculations, we are ready to show how all the myths and legends of the Stone of Foundation may be rationally explained as parts of that beautiful “science of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols,” which is the acknowledged definition of Freemasonry.

In the masonic system there are two temples; the first temple, in which the degrees of Ancient Craft Masonry are concerned, and the second temple, with which the higher degrees, and especially the Royal Arch, are related.  The first temple is symbolic of the present life; the second temple is 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.