To this day he is considered one of the most important Swiss representatives of the liberal Protestant direction in theology and church at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.

His brother Johannes describes him as a highly gifted, "precocious" boy - also in singing and acting - "who, as a four-year-old, trotted to school alongside his father, who was quick to stride.

After the Abitur Schmidt studied theology and philosophy at the universities of Berlin and Halle (Saale).

As editor of the liberal Protestant church newspaper, however, he then "in youthful zeal attacked not only the ecclesiastical conditions of the capital, but also the professors of the theological faculty so sharply that he forfeited the prospect of a professorship in Berlin".

[1] In 1875 Schmidt was appointed professor of New Testament Studies at the Faculty of Theology of the University of Basel.