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

“He sees that difficulty, adversity and persecution serve a beneficent purpose. These are his ‘wages’: and he learns to accept them ‘without scruple and without diffidence, knowing that he is justly entitled to them, and from the confidence he has in the integrity’ of that Employer who has sent him into this far-off world to prepare the materials for building the temple of the heavenly city.” [via]

Consider also:

  1. “‘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?'”
  2. “The three years’ ministry of the Christian Master ended with His death and, these refer to the three degrees of the Craft which also end in the mystical death of the Masonic candidate and his subsequent raising or resurrection.”
  3. “Anyone, of course, can understand the simpler meaning of our symbols, especially with the help of the explanatory lectures; but he may still miss the meaning of the scheme as a vital whole.”
  4. “The Craft whose work we are taught to honour with the name of a ‘science,’ a ‘royal art,’ has surely some larger end in view than merely inculcating the practice of social virtues common to all the world and by no means the monopoly of Freemasons.”
  5. “For many members of the Craft to be a Mason implies merely connection with a body which seems to be something combining the natures of a club and a benefit society.”