“It’s being made to learn things not on purpose. It’s unfair,” he said. “It’s sly.”

Edward Eager, Half Magic

Consider also:

  1. “The name Hiram Abiff signifies in Hebrew ‘the teacher (Guru, or enlightened one) from the Father’: a fact which may help you still further to recognize the concealed purpose of the teaching.”
  2. “Surely, then, it behoves us to acquaint ourselves with what that larger end consists, to enquire why the fulfilment of that purpose is worthy to be called a science, and to ascertain what are those ‘mysteries’ to which our doctrine promises we may ultimately attain if we apply ourselves assiduously enough to understanding what Masonry is capable of teaching us.”
  3. “In brief, the vaguest notions obtain about the origin and history of the Craft, whilst the still more vital subject of its immediate and present purpose, and of its possibilities, remains almost entirely outside the consciousness of many of its own members.”
  4. “Yet, there exists a large number of brethren who would willingly repair this obvious deficiency, brethren to whose natures Masonry, even in the more limited aspect of it, makes a profound appeal and who feel their membership of the Craft to be privilege which has brought them into the presence of something greater than they know, and that enshrines a purpose and that could unfold a message deeper than they at present realize.”
  5. “But because, for long and for many, Masonry has meant less than this, it has not as yet fulfilled its original purpose of being the efficient initiating instrument it was designed to be; its energies have been diverted from its true instructional purpose into social and philanthropic channels, excellent in their way, but foreign to and accretions upon the primal main intention.”