Temple of Solomon

“ Thou art comely as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains in the temple of Solomon! Thy caresses intoxicate me. Behold thy breasts—they are fragrant. Thy nipples are as wine!”
“O, yea,—gaze, gaze upon me, beloved. Thy eyes arouse me! O, what joy!—for thy desire is unto me,—me! Thy locks are scented. As a bundle of myrrh thou dost lie betwixt my breasts!”
Time ceases its current and closes over them in a solar cycle. Their bed is the green; their roof is of cedars; and their walls are of cypresses. And the banner over their tent is love. ”

“ Small and despised as the true Church may be in this world, it is precious and honorable in the sight of God. The temple of Solomon in all its glory was mean and contemptible, in comparison with that Church which is built upon a rock. ”

“ Our own dear reverend mother often inculcated upon us the remembrance of the words of God, 'I will not give my glory to another,' and it seems as if there were a special temptation to man to indulge vain-glory when undertaking any vast exterior work for religion. The most splendid temple that the world ever saw, that of Solomon, lasted barely four hundred years; its founder fell into idolatry, and the worshippers were carried into captivity in punishment for their sins. ”

“ Down in the hollow ground, underneath the olives and the orange-trees that flourish in the court of the great Mosque, is a wilderness of pillars—remains of the ancient Temple; they supported it. There are ponderous archways down there, also, over which the destroying “plough” of prophecy passed harmless. It is pleasant to know we are disappointed, in that we never dreamed we might see portions of the actual Temple of Solomon, and yet experience no shadow of suspicion that they were a monkish humbug and a fraud.
We are surfeited with sights. ”

“ Thus, when the Lord had permitted Solomon to erect, to his glory, that temple so famed for its magnificence, and so venerable through the splendour of its worship and the majesty of its ceremonies, what rigid precautions did he not take, lest men should abuse his goodness in choosing a special dwelling-place amid them, and lest they should dare to appear there, in his presence, covered with stains and defilements! ”

“ Then began Solomon’s marvelous development as a builder and statesman.
He was not content to build the house of the Lord alone. This is a remarkable circumstance, as illustrating the spirit which is created and sustained by all truly religious exercises. It would have been ambition enough for any man religiously uninspired to have erected such an edifice as the Temple. Most men are contented to do one thing, and to rest their fame on its peculiar excellence. ”

“ The elaborate particulars furnished us of the measurements of Solomon's Temple are too late in age, too divergent in particulars, too loosely strung together, too much mingled with later reminiscences, and altogether too architecturally insufficient, to enable us to re-construct the exact building, or even to form more than a vague conception of its external appearance. ”

“ When Solomon had built the temple, he spread forth his hands to the heavens, and prayed to the Father, in the presence of the congregation of Israel that was assembled, and the spirit of the Lord was poured out in such a wonderful manner that the people, through their faith, beheld the power and the glory of God as they were manifested in that temple. ”

“ Thus, the temple of God, the most glorious building ever laid on the face of the earth, was profaned, pillaged, and burnt, with the king's palace, and all the houses of the Jewish nobility, in the eleventh year of Zedekiah, - the nineteenth of Nebuchadnezzar, - the first of the forty-eight Olympiad, - the one hundred and sixtieth current year of the era of Nabonassar, - four hundred and twenty-four years, three months, and eight days from the time in which Solomon laid its foundation stone! ”

“ This Temple, called Solomon's Temple, because Solomon was the master workman was completed some time previous to the appearance of the Son of Man on the earth, in the form of the babe of Bethlehem, and had been dedicated as the House of the Lord, and accepted as a finished work by the Father, who commanded it to be built, that His Son might have a resting place on the earth, when he should enter on his mission.
Why, then, did Jesus exclaim to the man who volunteered to follow him wheresoever he went, that "the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head?" ”

“ Temple and town have gone to the ground, but it has endured. It was the precursor of the great symbolic Temple of Solomon, built by the descendants of those shepherd builders, students of the heaven’s wide pathless way, and which although destroyed, could be reconstructed by the measures and dimensions familiar to our mystic craft, and recorded in that great book of symbols, the Bible. ”

“ Let us never look with disdain on those below us, because we know not how soon we may need them. Solomon, in his letter to Hiram, acquaints him,
1. With his design to build a temple to the honour of God. Some think that temples among the heathen took their first rise and copy from the tabernacle which Moses erected in the wilderness, and that there were none before that; however there were many houses built in honour of the false gods before this was built in honour of the God of Israel, so little is external splendour a mark of the true church. ”

“ While this Temple was greatly inferior in richness of finish and furniture as compared with the splendid Temple of Solomon, it was nevertheless the best the people could build, and the Lord accepted it as an offering typifying the love and devotion of His covenant children. ”

“ The history of the Temple is the event which gives supreme religious importance to the reign of one who became in other respects a worldly and irreligious king. It is for this reason that I have dwelt upon its significance, and on the many interesting questions which its worship naturally suggests. Solomon gave an impulse to outward service, not to spiritual life. His religion was mainly that form of externalism which rose but little above the
"Gay religions full of pomp and gold" ”

“ At first the plain at the top was hardly sufficient for the holy house and the altar, for the ground about it was very uneven, and like a precipice; but when king Solomon, who was the person that built the temple, had built a wall to it on its east side, there was then added one cloister founded on a bank cast up for it, and on the other parts the holy house stood naked. But in future ages the people added new banks, 12 and the hill became a larger plain. They then broke down the wall on the north side, and took in as much as sufficed afterward for the compass of the entire temple. ”

“ It is of great consequence, in all our religious actions, that we design well, and that our eye be single. If Solomon had built this temple in the pride of his heart, as Ahasuerus made his feast, only to show the riches of his kingdom and the honour of his majesty, it would not have turned at all to his account. ”

“ On this great occasion, the Dedication of the Temple, all the tribe of Levi, without regard to their courses, the whole priestly order of every class, attended. Around the great brazen altar, which rose in the court of the priests before the door of the Temple, stood in front the sacrificers, all around the whole choir, arrayed in white linen. One hundred and twenty of these were trumpeters, the rest had cymbals, harps, and psalteries. Solomon himself took his place on an elevated scaffold, or raised throne of brass. The whole assembled nation crowded the spacious courts beyond. ”

“ Solomon’s temple, or the perfected temple of the human body, the perfected temple of the universe and the perfected temple of the soul, finally forms the perfect shrine for the living Ark. There at the head of a great cross it is placed, and there in man it becomes permanently fixed. The staves of polarity upon which it was carried are removed, and it becomes a living [60] thing, a permanent place where man converses with his God. There man, the purified priest, arrayed in the robes of his order, the garments of his soul, converses with the spirit hovering over the Mercy Seat. ”

“ This mosque is said to occupy the site of Solomon’s temple.
From the Mount of Olives we can plainly distinguish all the convents, and the different quarters of the Catholics, Armenians, Jews, Greeks, etc. The “Mount of Offence” (so called on account of Solomon’s idolatry) rises at the side of the Mount of Olives, and is of no great elevation. Of the temple, and the buildings which Solomon caused to be erected for his wives, but few fragments of walls remain. I had also been told, that the Jordan and the Dead Sea might be seen from this mountain ”

“ Like a magnificent temple, civilization has been rising through the centuries. Its walls have silently come up from the earth, like Solomon’s Temple, without clink of trowel or sound of hammer. It is built of granite, cut from the Gethsemanes of history. Leonidas and his brave three hundred at the pass of Thermopylæ carved some of the blocks of this great edifice, into whose walls men have gone down as the living stones. ”

“ Here our only clue is furnished by the figures for the correspond in walls of Ezekiel's temple, but the necessary caution has not hitherto been observed in a plying them to the proportions of the actual temple of Solomon. ”

“ Likewise the riches of Solomon point to the immeasurable riches of grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Solomon built the Temple of strong and well-hewn stones: Jesus Christ founded the spiritual temple, the Church, on the rock of Peter and on the Apostles, making it one united whole. The queen of Saba came to Solomon, to testify her reverence for him, and load him with presents: to our Lord came the three Magi from the East to adore Him and offer Him costly gifts. Solomon, seated in majesty on his lofty and magnificent throne, ruled over many nations. ”

“ The Site of the Temple.—On this important point our earliest authority is silent. It is now universally acknowledged, however, that the whole complex of buildings erected by Solomon stood along the crest of the eastern hill, crowned by the temple at the highest point, as Josephus expressly testifies (Bell. Jud.; V. v. 1, with which compare the letter of (Pseudo) Aristeas, sect. 84) . This at once brings the site of the temple into proximity to the world-famous sacred rock, the sakhra, over which now stands the building known as the Mosque of Omar, and, more correctly, as the Dome of the Rock. ”

“ Yet David collected stone, timber, and precious metals for its erection; and, not being allowed to erect the temple himself, was permitted to depute that office to his son and successor, "Solomon the Wise." At this time all the enemies of Israel had been conquered, the country was at peace; the domain of the Hebrews was greater than at any other time, before or afterward. It was the fitting time for the erection of a great shrine to enclose the sacred ark. Nobly was this done, and no human work of ancient or modern times has so impressed mankind as the building of Solomon's Temple. ”

“ When, O spiritual one, thou hast become thy own fortune,
Then, being thyself thy fortune, thou wilt never lose it.
How. O fortunate one, canst thou ever lose thyself,
When thy real self is thy treasure and thy kingdom?
How men and demons helped Solomon in building the temple.
When Solomon laid the foundations of the temple,
Men and Jinns came and lent their aid to the work,
Some of them with good-will, and others on compulsion,
Even as worshippers follow the road of devotion.
Men are as demons, and lust of wealth their chain,
Which drags them forth to toil in shop and field. ”

“ He laid the foundation in the fourth year of his reign, and the building was completed within seven years and a half. With the great wealth accumulated by his kingly father and specifically reserved for the building of the Temple, Solomon was able to put the known world under tribute, and to enlist the co-operation of nations in his great undertaking. The temple workmen numbered scores of thousands, and every department was in charge of master craftsmen. To serve on the great structure in any capacity was an honor; and labor acquired a dignity never before recognized. ”

“ They could find in the story of the building of Solomon’s Temple from the heterogeneous20 materials brought from everywhere, and its erection without the noise of a tool being heard, the agreement with these ideas of their Egyptian and Hindu brothers. For Solomon’s Temple means man whose frame is built up, finished and decorated without the least noise. ”

“ The devout Hebrews who had come together from far and near returned to their respective tribes filled with admiration,** and their limited knowledge of art doubtless led them to consider their temple as unique in the world; in fact, it presented nothing remarkable either in proportion, arrangement, or in the variety and richness of its ornamentation and furniture. Compared with the magnificent monuments of Egypt and Chaldæa, the work of Solomon was what the Hebrew kingdom appears to us among the empires of the ancient world—a little temple suited to a little people. ”

“ The outer temple interior—the place where the brilliant throng was gathered—would hold a thousand persons comfortably. (There was no seat in Solomon's temple, as there was no seat in the Tabernacle, which was a symbol of the ever unfinished work of the earthly priesthood.) And there was no seat here, save a throne-chair of gold, ivory, mother-of-pearl, and precious stones, that occupied the centre of a magnificent dais just in front of the entrance into the very small "Holy of Holies." ”