EASTER. The great festival of the Church's Year, and kept in commemoration of our Saviour's glorious Resurrection. It has always been observed by the Church, but in early ages there were bitter disputes as to the season when it was to be kept. Some wished it to be observed on the actual anniversary, whether the day happened to be a Sunday or not. The matter was settled at the Council of Nice, when it was decided that Easter should be kept on the first Sunday following the full moon which falls on, or next after, March 21st.
The word Easter is probably derived from the name of a Saxon goddess, whose festival was kept in the Spring of the year. The other name, Paschal, applied to this festival, is a Hebrew word meaning "passage," and is applied to the Jewish feast of the Passover, to which the Christian festival of Easter corresponds.
Easter used to be the great day for Baptism, for the restoring of
Penitents, and, in the early ages, even for the freeing of prisoners.
Every confirmed member of the Church of England is expected to
Communicate on Easter Day, in accordance with the direction at the
end of the Communion Service.
EASTER ANTHEMS. Certain passages, chosen from 1 Cor. v., Rom. vi., 1 Cor. xv., directed to be sung instead of the Venite on Easter Day.
ECCLESIASTICAL COMMISSIONERS. "In the year 1837 the Ecclesiastical Commissioners were embodied. They are not, as many suppose, the dispensers of State funds to the Church. They are a corporation for the purpose of holding as trustees a large amount of Church revenues. The sources from which the income in their hands arises are certain annual payments from several bishoprics, emoluments of suspended canonries, the property of suspended deaneries and sinecure rectories, capitular estates, and other Ecclesiastical sources." (Webb's "England's Inheritance in her Church.")
"The Ecclesiastical Commission does with the lands of Bishops and Chapters what these could never do for themselves. It can afford to wait for the falling in of leases, whereas those old corporations were obliged to renew them, that they might live on the money paid for renewals; and when it has got the lands it lets them for their full value. By this means it is able to pay the old corporations out of half their lands as much as they used to get from the whole under their own system, and the other moiety is taken out of the hands of laymen (regard being had to equity) and devoted to other beneficial purposes for the Church. In this way the surplus revenues of capitular estates have been applied to the benefit of an immense number of parishes which had claims upon them." (Dixon's "Peek Essay.")
ECCLESIASTICAL COURTS. The following are the principal: the
Consistory Courts of the Bishops; the Arches Court of Canterbury;
and the Supreme Court of Appeal, composed of members of the Judicial
Committee of the Privy Council. Under the Public Worship Act the
Dean of the Arches Court has been made Official Principal of both
Provinces. A Royal Commission has recently issued a Report upon the
Ecclesiastical Courts, and the question of their constitution
generally is under consideration.
ELECTION. A choosing, hence the "chosen people" of God. There are three views taken of election,—the Calvinistic, the Arminian, and the Catholic. The Calvinistic view is that certain persons are from all eternity chosen or elected by God to salvation, the rest of mankind being condemned to eternal death (See Predestination, Calvinism, Antinomianism.)
The Arminian view is that God, knowing what the life of every man born into the world shall be, and foreseeing that some "will refuse the evil and choose the good," hath elected them to eternal life. (See Arminianism.)
The Catholic view is that God of his mercy elects certain of His creatures for a place in the visible Church, and thus causes them to be placed in "a state of salvation," of which, however, they may fall short by their own perverseness.