Faith & Spirit Quote by William Robertson Smith

The provocation here is surgical: strip away the epic stories and you still have “religion.” William Robertson Smith is arguing against the comforting assumption that myth is the engine of ancient faith. His line insists on a distinction modern readers often blur: narrative is not the same thing as obligation. If mythology had “no sacred sanction,” then it couldn’t do the core job religion does socially - authorize behavior, police boundaries, make certain actions feel non-negotiable. Myth, in this framing, is cultural decoration: meaningful, memorable, portable, but not inherently binding.

The subtext is a quiet methodological revolt. In the late 19th century, scholars were busy treating myth like a fossil record of primitive belief, as if you could read Homer or a local legend and reconstruct the theology behind a temple. Smith, working at the birth of anthropology and comparative religion, shifts the evidentiary burden from stories to practices: rites, taboos, communal sacrifices, the institutional mechanisms that actually compel people. He’s also puncturing a Protestant-inflected bias that equates religion with doctrine. Ancient religion, he implies, isn’t primarily about assenting to a narrative; it’s about belonging to a system of sanctioned acts.

Why it works is the phrase “strictly speaking.” It signals a scalpel, not a rant - a scientist’s tone deployed in a field that often romanticizes. The sentence drains myth of sovereignty and hands it back to ritual and social authority, where power in religion usually resides.