Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/610

Rh 

    is the second vowel-symbol and the fifth letter in our alphabet. In its original form among the Phoenicians it represented the rough breathing our h: we have seen that A represented the smooth breathing. As the Greeks had the sound A at a very early period, it might have been ex pected that this symbol would have been taken by them with its original valus. But the want of symbols to denote the vowels was apparently felt to be more imperative ; therefore all the Phoenician symbols (corresponding to the Hebrew aleph, he, ayin) were taken to denote the vowel- sounds a, e, o respectively. The form of the symbol E lias varied little from the earliest Greek times to our own. In old Latin it is sometimes, but rarely, found in the form 1 1. The typical sound of E in almost all languages is one of those which we denote generally by a in English, e.g., in the word fate that is, one of the simple sounds between A (English ah) and I (English ee), which are pro duced by raising the tongue gradually from its lowest position (at A) to its highest position (at I) : in this scale of sounds the lips are not employed. The most clearly distinguished of these sounds are (1) that in men, (2) that in fair, (3) that in fate. It will be observed that these sounds have here different symbols ; and if these were consistently employed in English we should not have much reason to complain of our spelling ; but e has also the I- sound in here and see ; ai in wait has the same sound as a in fate ; and a has many sounds. Other languages employ diacritical marks to distinguish these sounds ; thus in Italian we have e and &amp;lt;?, called " open " and " close " e respectively ; these correspond very nearly to (2) and (3) mentioned above. It is probable that the same distinction of sound was given in Latin by employing ae to express the open e : at least open e is commonly found in Italian words which were written in Latin with ae, or with e short. It is possible that in Greece a similar distinction of close open e was expressed in early times by the symbols (epsilon) and rj (eta) but in Attica, at least after , the distinction seems to have been rather quantitative than qualitative. For the history of eta see article H. It is clear that in a perfect alphabet we ought to have at least three distinct symbols between A and I : we ought not to be compelled to distinguish the simple sounds by diphthongs or other modifications. Indeed yet more symbols would be desirable, for there are other sounds in this scale, which, however, are not easily distinguished from the above except by a practised ear. It is probable that ee in English of the and had the sound still heard in Scotland in words like ell, i.e., the simple e in our men pronounced long : this is not unlike the open e, tut the back of the tongue is lower. But ee had acquired its present I sound in.  EACHARD, (–), an English divine, was born in Suffolk in, and was educated at Catherine Hall, Cambridge, of which he became master in in succession to Lightfoot. He was created a doctor of divinity in by royal mandate, and was twice (in  and ) vice-chancellor of the university. He died on the 7th July. In he had published anonymously a humorous satire entitled The Ground and Occasions of the Contempt of the Clergy enquired into in a letter to It. //., which excited much attention and provoked several replies, one of them being from John Owen. These were met by Some Observations, efc., in a second letter to R. L., written in the same bantering tone as the original work. Eachard attributed the contempt into which the clergy had fallen to their imperfect education, tbeir insufficient incomes, and the want of a true vocation. He gave amusing illustrations of the absurdity and poverty of the current pulpit oratory of his day, some of them being taken from the sermons of his own father. He attacked the philosophy of Hobbes in his Mr llobbn s State of Nature considered ; in a dialogue betiveen Philautus and Timothy , and in his Some Opinions of Mr Hobbs considered in a second dialogue. These were written in their author s chosen vein of light satire, and Dryden praised them as highly effective within their own range. It is noteworthy that Eachard s own sermons were not superior to those he satirized. Swift alludes to him as a signal instance of a successful humorist who entirely failed as a serious writer. A collected edition of his works in three volumes, with a notice of his life, was published in 1774.  EADIE, (–), theologian and biblical critic, was born at Alva, in Stirlingshire, on the 9th May . Having manifested unusual ability at school, he was sent to the university of Glasgow, where he passed through the usual curriculum in arts. Immediately afterwards he commenced to study for the ministry at the Divinity Hall of the Secession Church, a dissenting body which, on its union a few later with the Relief Church, adopted the denomination United Presbyterian. In he was ordained to the pastoral charge of the Cambridge Street Secession church in Glasgow. Here he speedily attained a position of great eminence and usefulness, and for many years before the close of his life he was generally regarded as the leading representative of his denomination in the city which has always been its stronghold. Though he had little claim to be called eloquent, and his style was often slovenly, he had many of the other qualities that secure the most useful and enduring kind of popularity. As a preacher he was distinguished by invariable good sense, frequent flashes of happy illustration, masculine piety, deep spiritual earnestness, breadth of sympathy both intellectual and emotional, and most specifically of all by the power he had in his expository discourses of conveying the best results of biblical criticism in an intelligible form to a general audience. Behind the carelessness and apparent indifference of his manner, it was not difficult to detect the quick sensibility and tender feeling which were eminently characteristic of the man. Though more than once invited to an important charge elsewhere, Dr Eadie refused to leave Glasgow, in which he found a sphere more exactly suited to his pastoral gifts than he could expect in any other place. In 1863 he removed with a portion of his congregation to a new and beautiful church at Lansdowne Crescent, where his influence continued unabated until his death. From his student days Eadie bore a reputation for extensive, if not profound and accurate, scholarship, which he justified and increased during the earlier years of his ministry to such an extent that in 1843 the church to which he belonged appointed him professor of biblical liter ature and hermeneutics in its Divinity Hall. He held this appointment along with his ministerial charge till the close of his life, and discharged its duties with an efficiency that was universally acknowledged. While his scholarship was not minute or thorough, he was surpassed by few biblical commentators of his day in range of learning, and by still fewer in the soundness of judgment with which his learning was applied. As a critic he was acute and painstaking 