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 end every man had to take his part, or break with the domestic and political community to which he belonged.

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• William Robertson Smith:

  That the God-man died for his people, and that His death is their life, is an idea which was in som

• William Robertson Smith:

  The dissolution of the nation destroys the national religion, and dethrones the national deity.

• William Robertson Smith:

  The god can no more exist without his people than the nation without its god.

• William Robertson Smith:

  The god, it would appear, was frequently thought of as the physical progenitor or first father of h

• William Robertson Smith:

  The land of a god corresponds with the land of his worshipers.

• William Robertson Smith:

  The myths connected with individual sanctuaries and ceremonies were merely part of the apparatus of

• William Robertson Smith:

  This being so, it follows that mythology ought not to take the prominent place that is too often as

• William Robertson Smith:

  This, it may be said, is no more than a hypothesis... only of that force of precedent which in all

• William Robertson Smith:

  Thus a man was born into a fixed relation to certain gods as surely as he was born into a relation

• William Robertson Smith:

  We are so accustomed to think of religion as a thing between individual men and God that we can har