The Meaning of Masonry by W.L. Wilmshurst

One of the many fine books in our Free E-Library. 

http://www.phoenixmasonry.org/meaning_of_masonry/table_of_contents.htm

Here is an excerpt:

We meet in our Lodges regularly; we perform
our ceremonial work and repeat our catechetical instruction-lectures
night after night with a less or greater degree of intelligence and
verbal perfection, and there our work ends, as though the ability to
perform this work creditably were the be-all and the end all of Masonic
work. Seldom or never do we employ our Lodge meetings for that purpose
for which, quite as much as for ceremonial purposes, they were
intended, viz.: for " expatiating on the mysteries of the Craft," and
perhaps our neglect to do so is because we have ourselves imperfectly
realized what those mysteries are into which our Order was primarily
formed to introduce us. Yet, there exists a large number of brethren
who would willingly repair this obvious deficiency; brethren to whose
natures Masonry, even in their more limited aspect of it, makes a
profound appeal, and who feel their membership of the Craft to be a
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. 



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. 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 hole. It is absurd to think that a vast organization like Masonry was 
ordained merely to teach to grown-up men of the world the symbolical meaning 
of a few simple builders' tools, or to impress upon us such Masonry elementary 
virtues as temperance and justice: the children in every village school are 
taught such things; or to enforce such simple principles of 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. 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. 



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. Surely, 
then, it behooves 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.