ELEVEN
381
ELIAS
the practice of our familiar Exposition and Benedic-
tion (qq. v.).
All the usual authorities upon the liturgical history of the Mass are somewhat unsatisfactory owing to the neglect to note the important point as to the teaching of the Paris theologians of the twelfth century. See Thurston, TAe Elevation in The Tablet, 19 Oct., 26 Oct.. 2 Nov., 1907. But many useful facts may be gleaned from Giorgi, De Liturgid Bom. Pont. (Rome, 1744). HI; Lebrdx. Explication des prieres el des ceremonies de la Messe (Paris, 1726); Gihr. Das heilige Messopfer (tr. St. Louis. 1902); Th.ilhofer, Lilurgik (Freiburg, 1S93), II. Drury, Elevation in the Eucharist (Cambridge, 1907), is of little Talue. See further the bibliography of the article Canon of THE Mass. Herbert Thurston.
Eleven Thousand Virgins, The. See Ursula,
Saint.
Elhuyar y de Suvisa, Fausto de, a distinguished mineralogist and chemist, b. at Logroiio, Castile, 11 Oct., 1755; d. 6 Feb., 183.3. He was professor in the School of Mines, Vergara, Biscay, from 1781 to 1785. His most celebrated work is the isolation of tungsten. Associated with his brother, Juan Jose, in 1783, two years after Scheele and Bergman had announced the probable existence of this metal, he isolated it, reduc- ing it by carbon. At the present day when tungsten steel, known as high speed steel and self-hardening steel, is revolutionizing machine-shop practice, the work of Elhuyar is of particular interest. He named the metal Wolfram, a name which it still re- tains in the German language; the name, tungsten, meaning hea\'y stone, is generally used in other tongues. The Academy of Sciences of Toulouse, 4 March, 1784,receivednoticeof thisdiscovery. Elhuyar then spent tliree years in travelling, for the purpose of study, through Central Europe and went to Mexico, then called New Spain. Here he had general superin- tendence of the mines and founded a Royal School of Mines in 1792. Driven away by the Revolution, he returned to Spain, where he was appointed general director of mines and was busy reorganizing his de- partment when he was seized with a fit of apoplexy and died. His works are numerous; he wrote on the theory of amalgamation, a system for the reduc- tion of silver from its ore which received great devel- opment in Mexico. In 1818 he publi-shed memoirs on the mintage of coins. He was also the author of mem- oirs on the state of the mines of New Spain (now Mexi- co) and on the exploitation of the Spanish mines. At Madrid, in 1825, he published a work on the influence of mineralogy in agriculture and chemistry.
Biographies in Dictionnaire Laroiisse. La Grande Encyclopedic, and under tungsten and Wolfram. His work on the reduction of tun^ten is described in Wurtz, Dic/mnnaiVe dechimie; Watts, Dictionary of Chemistry; Muspratt. Chimie.
T. O'CoNOR Sloane.
Elias (Heb. 'Elwhu, " Yahveh is God"; A.V., Eli- jah), the loftiest and most wonderful prophet of the O. T. What we know of his public life is sketched in a few popular narratives enshrined, for the most part, in the Third (Heb., First) Book of Kings. These narra- tives, which bear the stamp of an almost contempo- rary age, very likely took shape in Northern Israel, and are full of the most graphic and interesting details. Every part of the prophet's life therein narrated bears out the description of the writer of Ecclesiasticus: He was "as a fire, and his word burnt like a torch" (xlviii, 1). The times called for such a prophet. Under the baneful influence of his Tyrian wife Jezabel, Achab, though perhaps not intending to forsake altogether Yahveh 's worship, had nevertheless erected in Samaria a temple to the Tyrian Baal (III K., xvi, 32) and in- troduced a multitude of foreign priests (xviii 19); doubtless he had occasionally offered sacrifices to the pagan deity, and, most of all, had allowed a bloody persecution of the prophets of Yahveh.
Of Elias's origin nothing is known, except that he was a Thesbite ; whether from Thisbe of Nephtali (Tob., i, 2, Gr.) or from Thesbon of Galaad, as our texts have it, is not absolutely certain, although most scholars.
on the authority of the Septuagint and of Josephus,
prefer the latter opinion. Some Jewish legends, echoed
in a few Christian writings, as.sert moreover that Elias
was of priestly descent ; but there is no other warrant
for the statement than the fact that he offered sac-
rifices. His whole manner of life resembles somewhat
that of the Nazarites and is a loud protest against his
corrupt age. His skin garment and leather girdle
(IV K., 1,8), his swift foot (III K., xviii, 46), his habit
of dwelling in the clefts of the torrents (xvii, 3) or in
the caves of the moimtains (xix, 9), of sleeping under
a scanty shelter (xix, 5), betray the true son of the
desert. He appears abruptly on the scene of history
to announce to Achab that Yahveh had determined
to avenge the apostasy of Israel and her king by bring-
ing a long drought on the land. His message delivered,
the prophet vanished as suddenly as he had appeared,
and, guided by the spirit of Yahveh, betook himself
by the brook Carith, to the east of the Jordan, and the
ravens (some critics would translate, however improb-
able the rendering, "Arabs" or "merchants")
"brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and
bread and flesh in the evening, and he drank of the
torrent" (xvii, 6).
After the brook had dried up, Elias, under Divine direction, crossed over to Sarepta, within the Tyrian dominion. There he was hospitably received by a poor widow whom the famine had reduced to her last meal (12); her charity he rewarded by increasing her store of meal and oil all the while the drought and famine prevailed, and later on by restoring her child to life (14-24). For three years there fell no rain or dew in Israel, and the land was utterly barren. Meanwhile Achab had made fruitless efforts and scoured the coun- try in search of Elias. At length the latter resolved to confront the king once more, and, suddenly appear- ing before Abdias, bade him summon his master (xviii, 7, sq.). When they met, Achab bitterly up- braided the prophet as the cause of the misfortune of Israel. But the prophet flung back the charge: " I have not troubled Israel, but thou and thy father's house, who have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and have followed Baalim" (xviii, 18). Taking advan- tage of the discountenanced spirits of the silenced king, Elias bias him to summon the prophets of Baal to Mount Carmel, for a decisive contest between their god and Yahveh. The ordeal took place before a great concourse of people (see C.^rmel, Mount) whom Elias, in the most forcible terms, presses to choose: " How long do you halt between two sides? If Yahveh be God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him" (xviii, 21). He then commanded the heathen prophets to invoke their deity; he himself would "call on the name of his Lord"; and the God who would answer by fire, "let him be God" (24). An altar had been erected by the Baal-worshippers and the victim laid upon it; but their cries, their wild dances and mad self-mutilations all the day long availed nothing: " there was no voice heard, nor did any one answer, nor regard them as they prayed" (29). Elias, having repaired the ruined altar of Yahveh which stood there, prepared thereon his sacrifice ; then, when it was time to offer the evening oblation, as he was praying earnestly, "the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the holocaust, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench" (.38). The issue was fought and won. The people, maddened by the success, fell at Elias's command on the pagan prophets and slew them at the brook Cison. That same evening the drought ceased with a heavy down- pour of rain, in the midst of which the strange prophet ran before Achab to the entrance of Jezrael.
Elias's triumph was short. The anger of Jezabel, who had sworn to take his life (xix, 2), compelled him to flee without delay, and take his refuge beyond the desert of Juda, in the sanctuary of Mount Horeb. There, in the wilds of the sacred mountain, broken-
