Now in the text two facts are mentioned about the building of the Temple : the stones were prepared beforehand in the quarry, and so the actual building was accomplished with no noise. Thus we have —
I. The House of God is Built of Prepared Stones. XL The House of God is Built Silently.
I.
The House of God is Built of Prepared Stones.
1. There is one " sight " in Jerusalem, often left unvisited by those who go to the Holy City. This is the great cavern under a portion of the city, known locally as Solomon's quarries. The entrance to this cavern is found just outside the Damascus Gate, on the north side of the city, and opposite Jeremiah's Grotto. The entrance is very small and obscurely located. For some reason, the place is little thought of by the local guides ; but it is certainly well worth a visit. The " quarries " are not a natural cavern, but a cavern made by the taking out of immense quantities
I KINGS VI. 7 383
of rock. The cavern extends for a long distance under the city, gradually sloping towards the south. It is 700 feet to its inner end ; it varies from 60 to 300 feet in width, and averages 30 feet in height, the roof being supported by large pillars of the native rock. In the walls and overhead the traces of chisels are every- where to be seen, and the chips from the hewn rock lie thick under foot. In many places the stones have been left half cut out, and the marks of the chisel and pick are as fresh as if the quarrymen had only just left their work ; even the black patches made by the smoke of their lamps are still visible. The best archaeologists agree that there is no improbability in the supposition that the great stones used in the substructure of the Temple of Solomon and in its surrounding walls were obtained from this quarry and fitted for their places in this underground workshop. The stones were prepared in this quarry and in others, were made to the right shape and size, and were then taken to the Temple site; and the building went up from prepared material, without the sound of hammer or axe or any tool of iron while it was in building.
1| As I wandered round the walls of Jerusalem with one who knew intimately all that is at present known of its antiquities, how well I remember the sudden surprise that came upon me when he said : " There you see those blocks, with huge chamfered edges, and rough middle dressings. They are by their tooled edges and the masons' marks, of which some have been discovered, probably, almost certainly, the work of Solomon's builders." There, now level with the ground, as Christ said they should one day be, and extending from forty to eighty feet below it, according to the disposition of the native rock underneath, was in very deed stone lying close to stone even as on that day when, as we read in the sixth chapter of the First Book of the Kings, " Solomon built the house, and finished it." It took one's breath away ; such centuries had passed and the stones had not cried out, but to-day they were eloquent. And as I gazed upon those gigantic blocks of Judsean limestone, bedded together so nicely that a sixpence could not pass between, my thoughts naturally went off to the masons who built so wonderfully and laid the stones so well. In gazing I saw again the swart-faced builders of Solomon, and the dark-eyed, dark-bearded masons of Hiram who did hew the stones, and the " stone squarers " working so diligently with plumbline and square. But though about me the air seemed to
384 HEWING AND BUILDING
breathe the scent of the cedar and the fir from the great side galleries, the porches, and the chambers that Solomon built, and to feel the dazzle of the golden lilies and knops and pomegranates and the glory of the "palmtrees and cherubim," one could not forget the motive for all those wonderful buildings — those mighty stones which, you remember, so touched the heart of one of the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth, ten centuries after, that as he went out of the Temple he said, as we read in St. Mark xiii. 1, " Master, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here " — one could not, I repeat, forget that that motive was wor- ship and praise of the Invisible, the worship of Jehovah, the praise of the great I AM.^
2. The stones in the spiritual House of God are prepared be- forehand. Believers having been hewn out from the quarry of humanity by the grace of God are called by St. Peter "living stones." They are not inert masses of rock, not senseless blocks of marble, but full of life, feeling, and action ; and they are thus designated because Christ, as " the tried corner-stone," " the sure foundation," is called " a living stone," and diffuses His own life through all parts of the spiritual temple which rests on Him. So every stone in it, from the foundation to the top-stone, is made a precious, a glistering, a living stone, through the indwell- ing life of Jesus, the Prince of life. So long, then, as the soul of the believer rests on Jesus Christ alone for salvation, and on nothing else, it has spiritual Life. Build it upon any other foundation, and it is a senseless stone ; only as laid by the Holy Ghost " upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ being the chief corner-stone," can it receive in itself the life of Christ, and become through the impartation of His own vitality a living stone.