In its simplest surviving savage type, religion consists wholly and solely in certain acts of deference paid by the living to the persons of the dead. I shall try to show in the sequel that down to its most highly evolved modern type in the most cultivated societies, precisely similar acts of deference, either directly to corpses or ghosts as such, or indirectly to gods who were once ghosts, or were developed from ghosts, form its essence still. But to begin with I will try to bring a few simple instances of the precise nature of religion in its lowest existing savage mode. I might if I chose take my little collection of illustrative facts from some theoretical writer, like Mr. Herbert Spencer, who has collected enough instances in all conscience to prove this point; but I prefer to go straight to an original observer of savage life and habit, a Presbyterian missionary in Central Africa--the Rev. Duff Macdonald, author of _Africana_--who had abundant opportunities at the Blantyre Mission for learning the ideas and practice of the Soudanese natives, and who certainly had no theoretic predisposition towards resolving all religious notions into {025}the primitive respect and reverence for the dead or the worship of ancestors. Here, in outline, but in Mr. Macdonald’s own words, are the ideas and observances which this careful and accurate investigator found current among the tribes of the heart of Africa. “I do not think,” he says, “I have admitted any point of importance without having heard at least four natives on the subject. The statements are translations, as far as possible, from the _ipsissima verba_ of the negroes.” The tribes he lived among “are unanimous in saying that there is something beyond the body which they call spirit. Every human body at death is forsaken by this spirit.” That is the almost universal though not quite primitive belief, whose necessary genesis has been well traced out by Mr. Herbert Spencer, and more recently in America with great vigour and clearness by Mr. Lester Ward. “Do these spirits ever die?” Mr. Macdonald asks. “Some,” he answers, “I have heard affirm that it is possible for a troublesome spirit to be killed. Others give this a direct denial. Many, like Kumpama, or Cherasulo, say, ‘You ask me whether a man’s spirit ever dies. I cannot tell. I have never been in the spirit-world, but this I am certain of, that spirits live for a very long time.’” On the question, “Who the gods are?” Mr. Macdonald says: “In all our translations of Scripture where we found the word God we used _Mulungu_; but this word is chiefly used by the natives as a general name for spirit. The spirit of a deceased man is called his Mulungu, and all the prayers and offerings of the living are presented to such spirits of the dead. It is here that we find the great centre of the native religion. The spirits of the dead are the gods of the living.