At Jerusalem the Temple was built on Mt. Moriah, where the ark of the covenant rested after its return from Philistia,[[458]] and where David erected an altar to the Lord after the staying of the pestilence from Israel.[[459]] And it is supposed that this same Mt. Moriah was where Abraham offered a sacrifice to God on an altar he had built for the sacrifice of his son.[[460]] And this site of the Temple at Jerusalem is held sacred to-day, in view of its being deemed by multitudes a holy place from the beginning of the world.[[461]]
When Naaman the Syrian was healed of leprosy by Elisha, the prophet of Israel, he desired thenceforth to worship Jehovah in his Syrian home. To this end he asked of Elisha the gift of “two mules’ burden of earth” from Samaria, in order that he might on that sacred foundation erect in Syria an altar to Jehovah.[[462]]
In a prophecy of the Messiah as the foundation, or threshold, of a new temple, it was declared by the Lord: “Behold, I lay [or, I have laid] in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner-stone of sure foundation.”[[463]] Again, it was the promise of God to the Israelites that they should be restorers of worship on former foundations. “They that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in.”[[464]]
New Testament phraseology makes frequent reference to this same idea. “According to the grace which was given unto me, as a wise master-builder, I laid a foundation,” says Paul. “But let each man take heed how he buildeth thereon. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Christ Jesus.”[[465]] The Christian saints of the “household of God,” as “living stones,”[[466]] are “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief corner stone; in whom each several building, fitly framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the Lord.”[[467]]
Muhammadanism, which shows many survivals of primitive ideas and primitive customs, emphasizes the importance of the first foundation as the only foundation, in the traditions and legends of the holy places of its most sacred city. Every masjid, or “place of prostration,” in that vicinity is on a site counted holy long centuries before the days of the Prophet of Islam.
The Kaʿbah, or Holy House, in the mosk at Meccah is said to have been built by Adam himself, on the model of a similar structure in heaven. It would seem as if no earthly foundation, or threshold, could have been earlier than that; indeed, the Qurân declares: “The first house appointed unto men to worship in was that which was in Beccah [or Meccah];”[[468]] yet there is a tradition that Adam erected a place of prayer even before he built the Kaʿbah. In the Deluge the Holy House was destroyed; but Abraham was directed to rebuild it, and on digging beneath the surface of its site he discovered the original foundation, and the Kaʿbah was newly built up on that.
According to Muhammadan traditions, it was while Hagar was near the site of the Holy House, with her famishing son Ishmael, that a spring of water gushed forth with its life-giving stream from beneath that holy site. And that spring is the well Zemzem, or Zamzam, whose waters are deemed sacred and life-giving to-day.
Mount Arafat, a holy hill near Meccah, is another place of pilgrimage, and its sacredness dates from even an earlier day than the laying of the first foundation of the Holy House at Meccah by Adam. When our first parents were cast out of their heavenly paradise, Adam lighted in Ceylon, and Eve in Arabia. Seeking each other, they met on Mount Arafat, or the Mount of Recognition, and therefore that spot of their reunion and new covenanting is a place of pilgrimage and worship for the faithful of all the world at this time.[[469]] Adam is said to have built a madaa, a place of prayer, on Mount Arafat, before he built the Kaʿbah.[[470]] The religion of Islam thus teaches its subjects to worship at the earliest threshold laid by our first parents in their primal covenanting, and all other religions recognize the importance of a similar idea.