As I sit at my kitchen table, I'm going through a pile of books looking for topics to write about. It seems that while reading, that some of the things that plague our fraternity today, have done so for a very very long time.
I'm reading Morals & Dogma, and Albert Pike's two lectures on Masonic Symbolism. Here is what Pike has to say about the state of Masonic Education in his time;
"Where in our Lodges are lectures habitually delivered for the real instruction of the brethren? Do not our sessions pass in the minor matters of business, the settlement of points of order and questions of mere administration, and the admission and advancement of Candidates, whom after their admission we take no pains to instruct?
In what Lodges are our ceremonies explained and elucidated; corrupted as they are by time, until their true features can scarcely be distinguished; and where are those great primitive truths of revelation taught, which Masonry has preserved to the world?
We have high dignities and sounding titles. Do their possessors qualify themselves to enlighten the world in respect to the aims and objects of Masonry? Descendants of those Initiates who governed empires, does your influence enter into practical life and operate efficiently in behalf of well-regulated and constitutional liberty?
Your debates should be but friendly conversations. You need concord, union, and peace. Why then do you retain among you men who excite rivalries and jealousies; why permit great and violent controversy and ambitious pretensions? How do your own words and acts agree? If your Masonry is a nullity, how can you exercise any influence on others?"
I ask you my Brothers; has anything changed? If so how?
