The first written record that I have been able to find of this legend is contained in the second edition of Anderson’s Constitutions, published in 1738, and is in these words:—­

“It (the temple) was finished in the short space of seven years and six months, to the amazement of all the world; when the cape-stone was celebrated by the fraternity with great joy.  But their joy was soon interrupted by the sudden death of their dear master, Hiram Abif, whom they decently interred, in the lodge near the temple, according to ancient dusage.” [157]

In the next edition of the same work, published in 1756, a few additional circumstances are related, such as the participation of King Solomon in the general grief, and the fact that the king of Israel “ordered his obsequies to be conducted with great solemnity and decency.” [158] With these exceptions, and the citations of the same passages, made by subsequent authors, the narrative has always remained unwritten, and descended, from age to age, through the means of oral tradition.

The legend has been considered of so much importance that it has been preserved in the symbolism of every masonic rite.  No matter what modifications or alterations the general system may have undergone,—­no matter how much the ingenuity or the imagination of the founders of rites may have perverted or corrupted other symbols, abolishing the old and substituting new ones,—­the legend of the Temple Builder has ever been left untouched, to present itself in all the integrity of its ancient mythical form.

What, then, is the signification of this symbol, so important and so extensively diffused?  What interpretation can we give to it that will account for its universal adoption?  How is it that it has thus become so intimately interwoven with Freemasonry as to make, to all appearances, a part of its very essence, and to have been always deemed inseparable from it?

To answer these questions, satisfactorily, it is necessary to trace, in a brief investigation, the remote origin of the institution of Freemasonry, and its connection with the ancient systems of initiation.

It was, then, the great object of all the rites and mysteries which constituted the “Spurious Freemasonry” of antiquity to teach the consoling doctrine of the immortality of the soul.[159] This dogma, shining as an almost solitary beacon-light in the surrounding gloom of pagan darkness, had undoubtedly been received from that ancient people or priesthood[160] what has been called the system of “Pure Freemasonry,” and among whom it probably existed only in the form of an abstract proposition or a simple and unembellished tradition.  But in the more sensual minds of the pagan philosophers and mystics, the idea, when presented to the initiates in their Mysteries, was always conveyed in the form of a scenic representation.[161] The influence, too, of the early Sabian worship of the sun and heavenly bodies, in which the solar orb was adored, on its resurrection, each morning, from the apparent death of its evening setting, caused this rising sun to be adopted in the more ancient Mysteries as a symbol of the regeneration of the soul.