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William Robertson Smith

William Robertson Smith Quotes

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Famous William Robertson Smith Quotes

“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 powerless before the advance of the Assyrians, that magical superstitions based on mere terror, or rites designed to conciliate alien gods, invade the sphere of tribal or national religion. 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 terror may dictate to the individual.”

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Book:Lectures on the Religion of the Semites: First Series. The Fundamental Institutions
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“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 a religion in which a whole nation in its national organisation appears as the religious unit.”

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Book:The Prophets of Israel: and their place in history to the close of the Eighth Century B.C.
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