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

“‘Know ye not’ says the great initiate St. Paul, ‘that ye are the temples of the Most High; and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?'” [via]

Consider also:

  1. “It is, of course, common knowledge that great secret systems of the Mysteries (referred to in, our lectures as ‘noble orders of architecture,’ i.e., of soul-building) existed in the East, in Chaldea, Assyria, Egypt, Greece, Italy, amongst the Hebrews, amongst Mahommedans and amongst Christians; even among uncivilized African races they are to be found. All the great teachers of humanity, Socrates, Plato, Pythagoras, Moses, Aristotle, Virgil, the author of the Homeric poems, and the great Greek tragedians, along with St. John, St. Paul and innumerable other great names–were initiates of the Sacred Mysteries.”
  2. “For the moment let me merely say that behind all the official religion systems of the world, and behind all the great moral movements and developments in the history of humanity, have stood what St. Paul called the keepers or ‘stewards of the Mysteries.'”
  3. “From that source Christianity itself came into the world. From them originated the great school of Kabalism that marvellous system of secret, oral tradition of the Hebrews, a strong element of which has been introduced into our Masonic system. From them too, also issued many fraternities and orders, such for instance, as the great orders of Chivalry and of the Rosicrucians, and the school of spiritual alchemy. Lastly, from them too also issued, in the seventeen century, modern speculative Freemasonry.”
  4. “There is surely, too, no need for us to join a secret society to be taught that the volume of the Sacred Law is a fountain of truth and instruction; or to go through the great and elaborate ceremony of the third degree merely to learn that we have each to die.”
  5. “This, our body of mortality, this veil of flesh and blood clothing the inner soul of us, this is the real ‘badge of innocence,’ the common ‘bond of friendship,’ with which the Great Architect has been pleased to invest us all this, the human body, is the badge which is ‘older and nobler than that of any other Order in existence'”