Now, if the ends of operative Masonry had here ceased,—­if this technical dialect and these technical implements had never been used for any other purpose, nor appropriated to any other object, than that of enabling its disciples to pursue their artistic labors with greater convenience to themselves,—­Freemasonry would never have existed.  The same principles might, and in all probability would, have been developed in some other way; but the organization, the name, the mode of instruction, would all have most materially differed.

But the operative Masons, who founded the order, were not content with the mere material and manual part of their profession:  they adjoined to it, under the wise instructions of their leaders, a correlative branch of study.

And hence, to the Freemason, this operative art has been symbolized in that intellectual deduction from it, which has been correctly called Speculative Masonry.  At one time, each was an integrant part of one undivided system.  Not that the period ever existed when every operative mason was acquainted with, or initiated into, the speculative science.  Even now, there are thousands of skilful artisans who know as little of that as they do of the Hebrew language which was spoken by its founder.  But operative Masonry was, in the inception of our history, and is, in some measure, even now, the skeleton upon which was strung the living muscles, and tendons, and nerves of the speculative system.  It was the block of marble—­rude and unpolished it may have been—­from which was sculptured the life-breathing statue.[52]

Speculative Masonry (which is but another name for Freemasonary in its modern acceptation) may be briefly defined as the scientific application and the religious consecration of the rules and principles, the language, the implements and materials of operative Masonry to the veneration of God, the purification of the heart, and the inculcation of the dogmas of a religious philosophy.

XII.

He Symbolism of Solomon’S Temple.

I have said that the operative art is symbolized—­that is to say, used as a symbol—­in the speculative science.  Let us now inquire, as the subject of the present essay, how this is done in reference to a system of symbolism dependent for its construction on types and figures derived from the temple of Solomon, and which we hence call the “Temple Symbolism of Freemasonry.”

Bearing in mind that speculative Masonry dates its origin from the building of King Solomon’s temple by Jewish and Tyrian artisans,[53] the first important fact that attracts the attention is, that the operative masons at Jerusalem were engaged in the construction of an earthly and material temple, to be dedicated to the service and worship of God—­a house in which Jehovah was to dwell visibly by his Shekinah, and whence he was, by the Urim and Thummim, to send forth his oracles for the government and direction of his chosen people.