We can form but an inadequate idea of the magnificence of this Temple
from its description in the sacred annals. An edifice which taxed the
mighty resources of Solomon and consumed the spoils of forty years'
successful warfare, must have been in that age without a parallel in
splendor and beauty. If the figures are not exaggerated, it required the
constant labors of ten thousand men in the mountains of Lebanon alone to
cut down and hew the timber, and this for a period of eleven years. Of
ordinary laborers there were seventy thousand; and of those who worked
in the quarries and squared the stones there were eighty thousand more,
besides overseers. It took three years to prepare the foundations. As
Mount Moriah, on which the Temple was built, did not furnish level space
enough, a wall of solid masonry was erected on the eastern and southern
sides nearly three hundred feet in height, the stones of which, in some
instances, were more than twenty feet long and six feet thick, so
perfectly squared that no mortar was required. The buried foundations
for the courts of the Temple and the vast treasure-houses still remain
to attest the strength and solidity of the work, seemingly as
indestructible as are the pyramids of Egypt, and only paralleled by the
uncovered ruins of the palaces of the Caesars on the Palatine Hill at
Rome, which fill all travellers with astonishment. Vast cisterns also
had to be hewn in the rocks to supply water for the sacrifices, capable
of holding ten millions of gallons. The Temple proper was small compared
with the Egyptian temples, or with mediaeval cathedrals; but the courts
which surrounded it were vast, enclosing a quadrangle larger than the
area on which St. Peter's Church at Rome is built. It was, however, the
richness of the decorations and of the sacred vessels and the altars for
sacrifice, which consumed immense quantities of gold, silver, and brass,
that made the Temple especially remarkable. The treasures alone which
David collected were so enormous that we think there must be errors in
the calculation,--thirteen million pounds Troy of gold, and one hundred