ELDERS, persons who, on account of their age, experience, and wisdom, are selected for office, as, among the Jews, the seventy men associated with Moses in the government of the people. In the modern Presbyterian Churches elders are officers who, with the pastors or ministers, compose the consistories or kirk-sessions, with authority to inspect and regulate matters of religion and discipline in the congregation. As a member of the kirk-session the elder has an equal vote with his minister, and as a member of the higher Church courts, when delegated thereto, he has a right to discuss and vote on all matters under discussion in the same manner as the clergy themselves. In the Mormon Church the elder is an officer whose duty it is "to preach and baptize, to ordain other elders, to bless children, and to take the lead at all meetings". Among the Shakers there are four elders, two men and two women, in each congregation.
ELDON, John Scott, Earl of, Lord Chancellor of England, born in 1751 at Newcastle-on-Tyne, died in London, 13th Jan., 1838. His father was a coal-dealer and public-house keeper of means, and John was educated with his brother William (afterwards Lord Stowell) at Newcastle, and at Oxford, where he obtained a fellowship. He was called to the Bar in 1776, and in 1782 was made King's Counsel. Next year he entered Parliament, supported Pitt, and was made Solicitor-General, and knighted. In 1792 he purchased the estate of Eldon. In 1793 he became Attorney-General, and in 1799 was created Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, and raised to the peerage and the House of Lords by the title of Baron Eldon. On the accession of the Addington ministry he became Lord Chancellor (1801), and retained this post under the subsequent administration of Pitt until the death of the latter in 1806. A year later, however, he resumed the chancellorship under Liverpool, and held it without break for twenty years. In 1821 he was created an earl by George IV. On the accession of the Canning ministry in 1827 he resigned the chancellorship, and never again held office. As a lawyer he was a master of English jurisprudence; as a politician he was opposed to reform, and by no means free from the charge of servility and intrigue.