Page:Curious myths of the Middle Ages (1876).djvu/399

 of iron in the construction of the altar is given in the Mischna iron is used to shorten life, the altar to prolong it (Middoth 3, 4). Iron is the metal used in war; with it, says Pliny, we do the best and worst acts: we plough fields, we build houses, we cleave rocks; but with it, also, come strife, and bloodshed, and rapine. The altar was the symbol of peace made between God and man, and therefore the metal employed in war was forbidden to be used in its erection. The idea was extended by Solomon to the whole temple. It is not said that iron was not used in the preparation of the building stones, but that no tool was heard in the fitting together of the parts.

That temple symbolized the Church triumphant in heaven when the stones, hewn afar off in the quarries of this world, are laid noiselessly in their proper place, so that the whole, “fitly framed together, groweth unto a holy temple in the Lord;” an idea well expressed in the ancient hymn “Angulare fundamentum:” “Many a blow and biting sculpture Polish’d well those stones elect, In their places well compacted By the heavenly Architect.” Nothing in the sacred narrative implies any