"The danger in an organization such as ours is that, while it begins with ideals and principles, the organization may become the greatest enemy to those ideals and principles.
Some person has imagined a conversation between the devil and some angels. The angels proudly told the devil that a way had been found to defeat him. When he asked how it would be done, they told him that God was going to give men lofty ideals and challenging principles to be proclaimed to the world.
The devil just laughed, and told them that he could not be defeated that way, for all he would have to do would be to institutionalize the ideals and the principles, and it would only be a matter of time until men would forget the ideals and principles as they tried to keep the institution alive.
As I once heard a friend of mine explain, "first the idea creates the organization, then the organization chokes the idea." We can become so concerned about keeping an organization alive that we forget the ideas and ideals that give it birth. We begin by having a great ideal force our thinking and acting into new channels, and we end by serving an organization. Freemasonry must be a force to be used, and not a form to be served."
-- M.W. Bro. Rev. Dr. Thomas Sherrard Roy, PGM (1951-3) GLMA: Dare We Be Masons? 1966
No comments:
Post a Comment