Hence we learn, from the great Jewish historian, that, in the construction of the tabernacle, which gave the first model for the temple at Jerusalem, and afterwards for every masonic lodge, this principle of symbolism was applied to every part of it.  Thus it was divided into three parts, to represent the three great elementary divisions of the universe—­the land, the sea, and the air.  The first two, or exterior portions, which were accessible to the priests and the people, were symbolic of the land and the sea, which all men might inhabit; while the third, or interior division,—­the holy of holies,—­whose threshold no mortal dared to cross, and which was peculiarly consecrated to GOD, was emblematic of heaven, his dwelling-place.  The veils, too, according to Josephus, were intended for symbolic instruction in their color and their materials.  Collectively, they represented the four elements of the universe; and, in passing, it may be observed that this notion of symbolizing the universe characterized all the ancient systems, both the true and the false, and that the remains of the principle are to be found everywhere, even at this day, pervading Masonry, which is but a development of these systems.  In the four veils of the tabernacle, the white or fine linen signified the earth, from which flax was produced; the scarlet signified fire, appropriately represented by its flaming color; the purple typified the sea, in allusion to the shell-fish murex, from which the tint was obtained; and the blue, the color of the firmament, was emblematic of air.[48]

It is not necessary to enter into a detail of the whole system of religious symbolism, as developed in the Mosaic ritual.  It was but an application of the same principles of instruction, that pervaded all the surrounding Gentile nations, to the inculcation of truth.  The very idea of the ark itself[49] was borrowed, as the discoveries of the modern Egyptologists have shown us, from the banks of the Nile; and the breastplate of the high priest, with its Urim and Thummim,[50] was indebted for its origin to a similar ornament worn by the Egyptian judge.  The system was the same; in its application, only, did it differ.

With the tabernacle of Moses the temple of King Solomon is closely connected:  the one was the archetype of the other.  Now, it is at the building of that temple that we must place the origin of Freemasonry in its present organization:  not that the system did not exist before, but that the union of its operative and speculative character, and the mutual dependence of one upon the other, were there first established.

At the construction of this stupendous edifice—­stupendous, not in magnitude, for many a parish church has since excelled it in size,[51] but stupendous in the wealth and magnificence of its ornaments—­the wise king of Israel, with all that sagacity for which he was so eminently distinguished, and aided and counselled by the Gentile experience of the king of Tyre, and that immortal architect who superintended his workmen, saw at once the excellence and beauty of this method of inculcating moral and religious truth, and gave, therefore, the impulse to that symbolic reference of material things to a spiritual sense, which has ever since distinguished the institution of which he was the founder.