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 imagination to the bloody ritual which is prominent in almost every religion which has a strong sense of sin. ↗
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. ↗
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 older mystical sacrifices. ↗
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 the interest of the worshipper... no one cared what he believed about its origin. ↗
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 of ancient faiths. ↗
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 his religion... was simply one side of the general scheme of conduct prescribed for him by his position as a member of society. ↗
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. ↗
I was very short when I was little, so I probably had - and there may be a residue of it now - that Napoleon complex. Wanting to be as big and as powerful as the big guys. ↗
