Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 129.djvu/189

Rh Taking the picture from the rich frame, he sent back the latter with his thanks and compliments. All decorations he also refused to accept—much to the annoyance of the king-emperor, who, in the alter Herr's off-hand manner, seemed to detect a slight upon the crown. Deak's constant resolve was to remain independent. No calumny could touch so disinterested a character.

Of late years, Deak's influence, though still an extensive one, gradually waned. A more advanced party came up, which, under Koloman Tisza, is now in power, and some of whose members aim at the establishment of a strict "personal union" that would entail the separation of the military forces of Hungary from those of Austria proper. It has been much remarked that Mr. Ghyczy, the president of the House of Commons at Pesth, in his speech on the life and career of Francis Deak, said: "He did not give us complete autonomy and independence, such as a nation may have under the rule of a prince; but he has given us that which could be attained within the existing political framework." From these words it may be inferred that a more thorough separation from Cis-Leithan Austria is the aim of an influential party in Hungary.

The death of the great patriot (January 29) has occurred at a moment when new storm-clouds are drifting over the Austro-Hungarian horizon. The opening up of the Eastern question has emboldened once more the so-called Sclavonian court party at Vienna. Reactionary Federalists and Centralists are already in eager expectancy. The political danger is enhanced by the contest between the upholders of the free-trade system in Hungary, and the protectionists in the western part of the Habsburg dominions. At present, the outlook is dark indeed. Francis Deak had seen the triumph of his country's cause; but, before closing his eyes, he also saw fresh perils gathering round it. He had fought his battles well for his nation's rights and for the extension of popular freedom; and though new struggles may soon have to be gone through by Hungary, no fitter words could be applied in his honour than those written on a garland laid on his bier,—"Fading flowers for never-fading merit."

 

delivered last Sunday, in Edinburgh, the first of a series of lectures on the Christian doctrine of sin, and dwelt in his openings address chiefly on the bearing which the recognition of the fact of sin should have on the modern theory of evolution. He pointed out that there is nothing in Christian teaching in the least inconsistent with the theory of development of which Mr. Darwin, for instance, is the chief exponent What is inconsistent with it is the notion, he said, that everything can be accounted for as a mere growth out of antecedent states, and that all divine agency is excluded; that nature is not merely a sphere of action, but the acting power itself, beyond which there is nothing. That the doctrine of evolution, by natural selection or in any other way, may describe the true method in which life rises from the lower to the higher levels, Principal Tulloch not only did not deny, but held it to be in every sense consistent with the evolution of conscious life, as we know it ourselves on those higher levels. It is no longer supposed, as he very justly remarked, that theology is merely the classified arrangement of Scriptural teachings properly interpreted, it is held by all the better thinkers to be the vital growth of the moral and spiritual experience of man as enlightened by Scripture, and its business is to trace the various links in the organized structure of Christian history and thought. Now, if this be true, so far is a doctrine of gradual evolution of the forms of life from being inconsistent with Christian teaching, it is but the anticipation in lower stages of creation of the highest application of that teaching. Only, just as in interpreting the gradual development of Christian doctrine and Christian thought, we never think of assuming that the later stage is nothing but the earlier stage in transformation, but rather assume that the later stage is a fuller unfolding of that divine mind which was less perfectly seen in the earlier stage, so with regard to physical evolution, the assumption of the Christian faith is that it is the divine power which is seen in evolution throughout all the stages of the gradual growth of life, only more fully manifested in the more complex organisms of the higher creation than in the simpler organisms of the lower. Christian faith has not only nothing to say against evolution, but recognizes 