William Robertson Smith Quotes

18 quotes in 354 categories

• But, strictly speaking, this mythology was no essential part of ancient religion, for it had no sacred sanction and no binding force on the worshippers.
• It is only in times of social dissolution, as in the last age of the small Semitic states, when men and their gods were alike…
• This, it may be said, is no more than a hypothesis, but it satisfies the conditions of a legitimate hypothesis, by postulating the operation of…
• That the God-man died for his people, and that His death is their life, is an idea which was in some degree foreshadowed by the…
• In better times the religion of the tribe or state has nothing in common with the private and foreign superstitions or magical rites that savage…
• We are so accustomed to think of religion as a thing between individual men and God that we can hardly enter into the idea of…
• Thus a man was born into a fixed relation to certain gods as surely as he was born into a relation to his fellow-men; and…
• The dissolution of the nation destroys the national religion, and dethrones the national deity.
• Religion did not exist for the saving of souls but for the preservation and welfare of society, and in all that was necessary to this…
• In all the antique religions, mythology takes the place of dogma; that is, the sacred lore of priests and people... and these stories afford the…
• The god, it would appear, was frequently thought of as the physical progenitor or first father of his people.
• The land of a god corresponds with the land of his worshipers.
• Even the highest forms of sacrificial worship present much that is repulsive to modern ideas, and in particular it requires an effort to reconcile our…
• The myths connected with individual sanctuaries and ceremonies were merely part of the apparatus of the worship; they served to excite the fancy and sustain…
• But if it not be true, the myth itself requires to be explained, and every principle of philosophy and common sense demand that the explanation…
• The god can no more exist without his people than the nation without its god.
• This being so, it follows that mythology ought not to take the prominent place that is too often assigned to it in the scientific study…
• This, it may be said, is no more than a hypothesis... only of that force of precedent which in all times has been so strong…

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