Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 07.djvu/398

* EXECUTOR. 350 EXEGESIS. to do. No one is compelled to accept the office of executor against his will; but, having once been accepted, the duty cannot be renounced nur assigned to another, and the acceptance may be informal and even unintentional, as by taking pos- session of the estate, paying the executor's own claim out of money of the testator in his hands, etc. Executob de Son Tobt. A person not named in the will as executor may, by usurping the office, have its liabilities and many of its powers imposed, upon him. without thereby acquiring its privileges and immunities. Such a person is known as an executor of his own wrong {de son tort). Any assumption of authority over the estate, or any interference with it, such as be- longs of right to an executor, constitutes such a usurpation. An executor de son tort is liable only for such assets as come into his hands, and the acts of de facto administration performed by him are in general valid so far as other parties who deal with him in good faith are concerned. In the law of Scotland the term executors i9 employed to describe the next of kin of a de- cedent, whether testate or intestate, who are en- titled to share in the distribution of his per- sonal estate, the person corresponding to the executor of English and American law being dis- tinguished by the title of testamentary executor. (See Administration: Distribution; Heir; Personal Representative; Will.) Consult: Wentworth, Office and Duty of Executors (Lon- don, 1728; Amer. ed. Philadelphia. 1832) ; Burn, Ecclesiastical Law (30th ed., London, 1869) ; Wil- liams, The Law of Executors and Administrators (9th ed., London, 1893) ; Croswell, The Law Re- lating to Executors and Administrators (Boston, 1889) ; Woerncr, The American Law of Adminis- tration (2d ed., Boston, 1902). EXECUTORY DEVISE. A testamentary gift of a future interest in real or personal prop- erty of such a nature that it cannot be brought within the technical description of a remainder. In its earlier period the common law recognized no future estates in personal property, nor any in real property but reversions and remainders. Ilnlh of these were the remnants of a freehold out of which a smaller estate had been 'carved,' as the expression was, and given to another. If this remnant was retained by the former freehold tenant, it was a reversion; if it was, at the time of the creation of the lesser .-lite, given to a third person, it was a remainder. Thus, if a tenant in fee simple made a conveyance of a life estate, lie still had a fee simple which was con- ceived nf as reverting to him at the expiration of the life estate, or which he might vest in an- other as a remainder. In either ease the future estate, to be valid, must lit exactly upon the precedent estate. An interval of even a day between (lie two rendered the attempted future cstair void. Neither could there be a remainder to take effect in the future without a preceding . Hie 'to sit|i|inrt it.' nor could a remainder be created after or in derogation of a fee simple. The practice of conveying lands to the use. or in tni i which prevailed in England during tin- fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. opened the way fur the recognition of certain fuiiiro interests in land which were not permitted by the ri'_'id and artificial common-law system, and the famous Statute of Uses, passed in the twenty-seventh year of Henry VIII. (1535), stereotyped these interests into new legal estates, known as springing and shifting uses. The Stat- ute of Wills (32 Hen. VIII.), which for the first time permitted the free alienation of lands by will, enabled testators to create the same inter- ests more simply and directly by testament, under the description of executory devises. These were of two classes, corresponding to the shifting and springing uses, the former including future es- tates to take effect in substitution for a preced- ing fee simple — as a gift of land to A and his heirs, the same to go to a charity if A or his heirs ever ceased to occupy the premises so given; the second comprehending future interests to arise on an uncertain event — as a devise to B when he should attain the age of twenty-one years. In the form here described, executory devises have continued to be a recognized form of testamentary disposition of real estate, and the expression has also been extended by analogy to include certain future interests in personal property which have acquired legal recognition. This form of limitation is restrained by the law against perpetuities (q.v.), which requires that the estate must take effect within a life or lives in being and twenty-one years after. The law will not interpret a limitation as an executory devise if it can be otherwise sustained. When- ever, therefore, a future interest in land is so devised as to fall within the rules laid down for the limitation of contingent remainders, such de- vise will be construed as a contingent remainder, and not as an executory devise. An executory devise, unlike a remainder, cannot be defeated by any act of the first taker or devisee; when. therefore, an absolute power of disposition is in the first taker, the limitation over is not an ex- ecutory devise. See Devise; Future Estate; Remainder; Use and Occupation. EXEGE'SIS (Xeo-Lat., from Gk. e$p-n<w, exegesis, explanation, from Q-qyeiaBou, r.n'*/, isthai, to explain, from ij- t ex, out + -hyeto-dai, hegei sthai, to lead, from iyeiv, agein, to lead) of the Bible. of the old testament. The Bible of the Apostolic Church was, natu rally, the Scriptures of the Jews, and these Scrip- tures mainly in the Creek form of the Septuagint translation, since the popular ignorance of the Hebrew language at that time rendered direct use of the original text impossible. Concerning the interpretation of these Scriptures by the immediate disciples of Jesus, we have no certain information. It may be inferred, however, from such documents as we possess that their exegesis of the Law did not differ materially from that of the earlier rabbis in the Mishna, while their haggadic interpretation of the Prophets and the Psalms was such as to furnish them with proofs of the Messiahship of Jesus and with material fur His life. This attitude was largely preserved^ even beyond the middle of the second century, in the Ebionitish circles, whence the Clementine writings proceeded. But the identity "f Judaism ami Christianity could be maintained only at the sacrifice of certain parts of the Law that were declared unprophetical, ami therefore un Mosaic. In this connection, observations of style arc in- troduced in which the beginnings of liter. n/. criticism may be discerned. A fresh impulse in