Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1873-08-24
THE GREAT TEMPLE.
sOIOmon's Structure Compared with
e Other Ancient Works.

rvref other AucfenG WoxKb.
aE From the Edinburgh Review.
The skill, the art, the mighty toll that
have been devoted to the adorDment, and
to the decoration of this most ancient place
of worship, have been of extraordinary
magnitude. The grandest legacy OF
Egyptian antiquity, the great pyramid,
/ demanded, indeed, a larger amount
of naked human labor; but in
Moriah there is a compulsion of the feat
ures of nature herself to the service
of the builder. In actual bulk the
great pyramid is to the Temple rock as five
to nine, if we descend but as far as the sills
of the five double gates of the mountains
of the house. If we carry the comparison
down to the level at which the lowest FOUL
dation of the walls is inlaid in the rock at
the angles of the inclosure, the bulk is
three times that of the great pyramid.
The cubic contents of the mason's work
may not amount to tenth part of that
piled up by Souphis. But the hill has
been honey-combed with chambers and
galleries; and the declining part to the
south covered with vaults and arches, to
which Gheezeh can show no parallel. No
merely artificial structure could have 30
successfully resisted The resolute efforts of
the two greatest military nations of the an
Gent world to destroy its existence and OBJ
literate its memory. No other monument,
long surviving the era of the Asiatic and
Italian power, can ever, like the noble sane
tuary, mark by its very ruins the success
sive periods of its glory and fall
FIVE regard not 80 much the evidence of
the labor devoted to the work Of the Tenn
pie as the effect produced on the mind by
its apparent magnitude, we may suggest the
following comparisons: The length of the
eastern wall of the sanctuary is rather more
than double that of one side of the great
pyramid. Its height. from the foundation of
the rock at the south, and near the no thern
angles, was nearly third of that of the
Egyptian structure. If to this great height
of 152 feet of solid wall be added the de-
scent of ia feet to the bed of the Kedron,
and the further elevation of 160 feet attain
ed by the pinnacle of the Temple porch, we
have total height of 416 feet, which is
only SO feet less than that of the great
pyramid. The area of the face of the
eastern wall is more than double that of
one side of the pyramid. Thus the
magnitude of the noble sanctuary
of Jerusalem far exceeded that of any other
temple in the world. Two amphitheatres
of the size of the Coliseum would have
stood within its colossal girdle, and left
room to spare. The Coliseum is
said to have seated $1,000 specta-
tors, and accommodated $4,000 more in
its arena snd passages. For such . number
to have been crammed within its circle,
tie space for each person must have
been limited to seventeen by twenty inches.
Allowing two cubits each way, or four
square cubits for each worshiper in the
Temple, the sanctuary would have contain
ed 10000; the chel, including the priests
court, 10000 more, and there would yet
have been room in the great court and the
cloisters to make the total reach more than
10000.