EBLIS, in Mohammedan tradition the chief of the fallen angels, consigned to perdition for refusing to worship Adam at the command of his Creator, and who gratified his revenge by seducing Adam and Eve from innocency.

EBONY, a name given to Blackwood by James Hogg, and eventually applied to his magazine.

EBRO, a river of Spain, rises in the Cantabrian Mountains, flows SE. into the Mediterranean 80 m.  SW. of Barcelona, after a course of 422 m.

ECBATANA, the ancient capital of Media, situated near Mount Orontes (now Elvend); was surrounded by seven walls of different colours that increased in elevation towards the central citadel; was a summer residence of the Persian and Parthian kings.  The modern town of Hamadan now occupies the site of it.

ECCE HOMO (i. e.  Behold the Man), a representation of Christ as He appeared before Pilate crowned with thorns and bound with ropes, as in the painting of Correggio, a subject which has been treated by many of the other masters, such as Titian and Vandyck.

ECCHYMOSIS, a discolouration of the skin produced by extravasated blood under or in the texture of the skin, the result of a blow or of disease.

ECCLEFECHAN, a market-town of Dumfriesshire, consisting for the most part of the High Street, 5 m.  S. of Lockerbie, on the main road to Carlisle, 16 m. to the S.; noted as the birth and burial place of Thomas Carlyle.

ECCLESIASTES (i. e. the Preacher), a book of the Old Testament, questionably ascribed to Solomon, and now deemed of more recent date as belonging to a period when the reflective spirit prevailed; and it is written apparently in depreciation of mere reflection as a stepping-stone to wisdom.  The standpoint of the author is a religious one; the data on which he rests is given in experience, and his object is to expose the vanity of every source of satisfaction which is not founded on the fear, and has not supreme regard for the commandments, of God, a doctrine which is the very ground-principle of the Jewish faith; but if vanity is written over the whole field of human experience, he argues, this is not the fault of the system of things, but due, according to the author, to the folly of man (chap. vii. 29).

ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY, THE LAW OF, a vindication of the Anglican Church against the Puritans, written by Richard Hooker; the most splendid and stately piece of literary prose that exists in the language.

ECCLESIASTICAL STATES, territories in Italy once subject to the Pope as a temporal prince as well as ecclesiastically.

ECCLESIASTICUS, one of the books of the Apocrypha, ascribed to Jesus, the son of Sirach, admitted to the sacred canon by the Council of Trent, though excluded by the Jews.  It contains a body of wise maxims, in imitation, as regards matter as well as form, of the Proverbs of Solomon, and an appendix on the men who were the disciples of wisdom.  Its general aim, as has been said, is “to represent wisdom as the source of all virtue and blessedness, and by warnings, admonitions, and promises to encourage in the pursuit of it.”  It was originally written in Hebrew, but is now extant only in a Greek translation executed in Egypt, professedly by the author’s grandson.