ESTIENNOT
551
ETERNITY
of a mere romancer, it may be said with Driver (op.
cit.) that fact is stranger than fiction, and that a con-
clusion based upon such appearances is precarious.
There is undoubtedly an exercise of art in the com-
position of the work, but no more than any historian
may use in accumulating and arranging the incidents
of his history. A more generally accepted opinion
among contemporarj- critics is that the work is sub-
stantially historical. Recognizing the author's clo.se
acquaintance with Persian customs and institutions,
they hold that the main elements of the work were
supplied to him by tradition, but that, to satisfy his
taste for dramatic effect, he introduced details which
were not strictly historical. But the opinion held by
most Catholics and by some Protestants is, that the
work is historical in substance and in detail. They
base their conclusions especially on the following:
(1) the vivacity and simplicity of the narrative; (2)
the precise and circumstantial details, as. particu-
larly, the naming of unimportant personages, the
noting of dates and events; (3) the references to the
annals of the Persians; (4) the absence of anachron-
isms; (5) the agreement of proper names with the
time in which the story is placed; (6) the confirmation
of details by history and archseologj' ; (7) the celebra-
tion of the feast of Purim in commemoration of the
deliverance of the Jews by Esther and Mardochai at
the time of the Machabees (II Mach., xv, 37), at the
time of Josephus (Antiq of the Jews, XI. \n. § 13). and
since. The explanation of Kautzsch (An Outline of
the Hist, of the Lit. of the O. T., p. 131) that the story
of Esther was engrafted on a Jewish feast already
existing and probably connected with a Persian fes-
tival, is only a surmise. Xor has any one else suc-
ceeded better in offering an explanation of the feast
than that it had its origin as stated in the Book of
Esther.
Herodotus, History. VII. S, 24, 35. 37-39; IX, 108; Raw- LINSOS, Hist. Ittus. of Ihe 0. T. (Chicago, 1880), 208 sqq.; Ew.\LD, Hist, of Israel: Dictionaries of the Bible, s. v.; Dieu- L.^FOl, Le Livre d'Eslher et le palais d'Assuerus in Rev. de^ Etudes Juives (1888); Rohart and VlGOl'ROUX in Diet, de la Bib., s. v.; GiGOT, Special Jntroduction to the Scriptures (1903); Davidson'. Introduction (1863). Commentaries by Calmet. a Lapide, MESOcHlcsin Migne, Script. Sacr. CursusComp.. XIII. ScHOLZ (1892); Seisenberger (1901). Protestant; Paton, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Book of Esther, (New York. 1908) in Int. Cril. Com. ; Streane. The Book of Esther (Oxford. 1908); Wildebaer (Marti). Die funf Megillot (1898); Siegfried (Nowack) (1901).
A. L. McM.VHON.
Estiennot de la Serre, Ol.^ude, Benedictine of the Congregation of 8aint-Maur, b. at Varennes, France. 16.39; d. at Rome, 1099. He joined the Benedictines at Vendome and was professed there in 16.58. After teaching humanities for a short time to the junior monks at Pontlevoy, he was, at the instance of Dom Luc d'.\ch^ry, sent to the Abbey of St-Germain-des- Pr^s, Paris, where his aptitude for study and research was quickly discovered by Dom Mabillon, whose inti- mate friend and fellow-worker he became. Together they journeyed on foot through Flanders, visiting all its chief monastic libraries. In 1670 he was made sub-prior of St-Martin's, Pontoise, a historj- of which abbey, in three volumes, was his first published work. Between 1673 and 1682 he compiled his chief work, entitled " Antiquitfe Benedictines", in which the mon- astic traditions of France are treated under the head- ings of the different dioceses. In 1()84 he was ap- pointed procurator for his congregation in the Curia Romana, which post required his residence in Rome for the remainder of his life. On his way thither from Paris he visited numerous monasteries and collected a great quantity of literary malcriMl, which he sent back to ftom Mabillon and most of which found its way into the "Annales O.S.B." or the "dallia Christiana". During the fifteen years he lived in Italy he laboured fruitfully on behalf of his congregation, and he was also greatly trusted by the French bishops, for whom
he acted in many matters of ecclesiastical business.
He enjoyed the entire confidence of several popes and
other high otticials of the Church, and he is described
as combining all the qualities of a man of letters with
great business ability. Besides the history of Pon-
toLse and the " Antiquites", already mentioned, he
collected sixteen volumes of " Fragments historiques",
but though he did not publish much under his own
name, he worked incessantly in the chief libraries of
Italy, all of which were open to him, and the results of
his researches he forwarded to Dom Mabillon and
others at St-Germain-des-Pres, to whom they were of
great service. He was buried in the church of the
Minims of SS. Trinita de' Monti.
Tassix, Hist. lit. de la cong. de St-Maur (Brussels. 1770).
G. Cyprian Alston. Esztergom, Diocese of. See Gran. Eternal Gospel. See Joachim op Flora.
Eternity {(rtemum, originally ceriternum, atdviov, aeon-long) is defined by Boetius (De Consol. Phil., V, vi) as "possession, n-ithout succession and perfect, of interminable life" (interminabilis vits tota simul et perfecta possessio). The definition, which was adopted by the Schoolmen, at least as applying to eter- nity properly so called, that of God, implies four things: that eternity is (1) a life, (2) without beginning or end, (3) or succession, and (4) of the most perfect kind. God not only is or exists, but lives. The no- tion of life, like all notions however abstract or spirit- ual, is, when apphed to God, but analogous. He not only does not live precisely as anj-thing else with which we are acquainted lives; He does not even exist as anj'thing else exists. Our notions of life and exist- ence are derived from creatures, in which life implies change, and existence is something added to essence, thus involving composition. In Gotl there can be no composition or change or imperfection of anj' kind, but all is pure act or being. The agnostic, however, is not thereby justified in saying that we can know noth- ing and should predicate nothing of God. It is true that, however we conceive Him or in whatever terms we speak of Him, our ideas and terminology are ut- terly beneath and unworthy of Him. Yet, even while arguing in this way, the agnostic thinks and speaks of Him as really as we do; nor can he or we do otherwise, compelled as we are to trace things back to their first cause. Yielding to this necessity, we can but think and speak of Him in the highest and most spiritual terms knownto us; not merely as existing, for instance, but as living; correcting at once, as far as we can, the form of our thought and predication, by adding that the Divine life is perfect, free from the least trace of defect. That is how and why we represent the Di- vine existence as a life. It is a life, moreover, not only without beginning or end but also without succession — tola stmiil, that is without past or future; a never- changing instant or "now". It is not so difficult to form some faint notion of a duration which never be- gan and shall never end. We hope that our own life shall be endless; and materialists have accustomed us to the notion of a series stretching backward without limit in time, to the notion of a material universe that never came into being but was always there. The Divine existence is that and much more; excluding all succession, past antl future time — indeed all time, which is succession — and to be conceived as an ever- enduring and unchanging "now".
In forming this notion of eternity it is well to think of the Divine immensity in its relation to space and extended things. One may conceive first a broken straight line — a line of separate dots; then a continu- ous line within two limits, beginning and end. The line can be. but is not, divided mto parts, shorter lines or dots, and the whole is finite both ways. It is like and yet unlike a finite spirit ; like, since it has no actual parts or divisions and is limited; yet unlike since it
