The Deeper Symbolism of Freemasonry from The Meaning of Masonry by Walter Leslie Wilmshurst.

“What is extremely ancient in Freemasonry is the spiritual doctrine concealed within the architectural phraseology; for this doctrine is an elementary form of the doctrine that has been taught in all ages, no matter in what garb it has been expressed.” [via]

Consider also:

  1. “The form of the teaching communicated has varied considerably from age to age; it has been expressed under different veils; but since the ultimate truth the Mysteries aim at teaching is always one and the same, there has always been taught, and can only be taught, one and the same doctrine.”
  2. “It is well to emphasize then, at the outset, that Masonry is a sacramental system possessing, like all sacraments, an outward and visible side consisting; of its ceremonial, its doctrine and its symbols which we can see and hear, and an inward, intellectual, and spiritual side, which is concealed behind the ceremonial, the doctrine and the symbols, and which is available only to the Mason who has learned to use his spiritual imagination and who can appreciate the reality that lies behind the veil of outward symbol.”
  3. “These Mysteries were formerly taught, we are told, ‘on the highest hills and in the lowest valleys,’ which is merely a figure of speech for saying, first, that they have been taught in circumstances of the greatest seclusion and secrecy, and secondly, that they have been taught in both advanced and simple forms according to the understanding of their disciples.”
  4. “It is absurd to think that a vast organization like Masonry was ordained merely to teach to grown men of the world the symbolical meaning of a few simple builders’ tools, or to impress upon us such elementary virtues as temperance and justice:–the children in every village school are taught such things; or to enforce such simple principles morals as brotherly love, which every church and every religion teaches; or as relief, which is practised quite as much by non-Masons as by us; or of truth which every infant learns upon its mother’s knee.”
  5. “I am acquainted, for instance, with an Egyptian ceremonial system, some 5,000 years old, which taught precisely the same things as Masonry does, but in the terms of shipbuilding instead of in the terms of architecture. But the terms of architecture were employed by those who originated modern Masonry because they were ready to hand; because they were in use among certain trade-guilds then in existence; and lastly, because they are extremely effective and significant from the symbolic point of view.”