e Yao in their wanderings. Here, some hold, his voice is still
audible. 'Others say that Mtanga never was a man ... he was concerned in
the first introduction of men into the world. He gets credit for ...
making mountains and rivers. He is intimately associated with a year of
plenty. He is called Mchimwene juene, 'a very chief.' He has a kind of
evil opposite, _Chitowe_, but this being, the Satan of the creed, 'is a
child or subject of Mtanga,' an evil angel, in fact.[7]

The thunder god, Mpambe, in Yao, Njasi (lightning) is also a minister of
the Supreme Being. 'He is sent by Mtanga with rain.' Europeans are
cleverer than natives, because we 'stayed longer with the people of
God (Mulungu).'

I do not gather that, though associated with good crops, Mtanga or
Mulungu receives any sacrifice or propitiation. 'The chief addresses
his own god;'[8] the chief 'will not trouble himself about his
great-great-grand-father; he will present his offering to his own
immediate predecessor, saying, 'O father, I do not know all your
relatives; you know them all: invite them to feast with you.'[9]

'All the offerings are supposed to point to some want of the spirit,'
Mtanga, on the other hand, is _nihil indiga nostri_.

A village god is given beer to drink, as Indra got Soma. A dead chief is
propitiated by human sacrifices. I find no trace of any gift to Mtanga.
His mysteries are really unknown to Mr. Macdonald: they were laughed at
by a travelled and 'emancipated' Yao.[10]

'These rites are supposed to be inviolably concealed by the initiated, who
often say that they would die if they revealed them.'[11]

How can we pretend to understand a religion if we do not know its secret?
That secret, in Australia, yields the certainty of the ethical character
of the Supreme Being. Mr. Macdonald says about the initiator (a grotesque
figure):--

'He delivers lectures, and is said to give much good advice ... the
lectures condemn selfishness, and a selfish person is called _mwisichana_,
that is, "uninitiated."'

There could not be better evidence of the presence of the ethical element
in the religious mysteries. Among the Yao, as among the Australian Kurnai,
the central secret lesson of religion is the lesson of unselfishness.

It is not stated that Mtanga instituted or presides over the mysteries.
Judging from the analogy of Eleusis, the Bora, the Red Indian initiations,
and so on, we may expect this to be the belief; but Mr. Macdonald kno