IRON TOOLS

The lectures teach us that at the building of King Solomon's Temple there was not heard the sound of ax, hammer, or other metallic tool. But all the stones were hewn, squared, and numbered in the quarries; and the timbers felled and prepared in the forest of Lebanon, whence they were brought on floats by sea to Joppa, and thence carried by land to Jerusalem, where, on being put up, each part was found to fit with such exact nicety that the whole, when completed, seemed rather the handiwork of the Grand Architect of the Universe than of mere human hands. This can hardly be called a legend, because the same facts are substantially related in the First Book of Kings; but the circumstance has been appropriated in Freemasonry to symbolize the entire peace and harmony which should prevail among Freemasons when laboring on that spiritual temple of which the Solomonic Temple was the archetype.