riune God, God the Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost, bless you; may he give you fidelity unto death, and then the
crown of life." After this is repeated the prayer of the _Apostolical
Constitutions_, that beautiful prayer which has been said on similar
occasions in many lands and in many tongues.[38] The service ends with
the communion.

A similar consecration service is used by nearly all the German
deaconess houses. The features of those that meet together in the
triennial Conferences at Kaiserswerth are strikingly similar; the spirit
of the original founder pervades them all.

The first of the Conferences was held in 1861, just twenty-five years
after the founding of the first deaconess house at Kaiserswerth. It was
celebrated as a Thanksgiving festival for the restoration of the
diaconate of women to the Church. The representatives of twenty-seven
distinct mother-houses met together to exchange their experiences, and
to deliberate on matters touching the further usefulness of the order.

Since then the Conferences have been continued at intervals of three and
four years. The last General Conference assembled at Fliedner's old home
in September, 1888.

Just before it convened, as is the custom, statistics were obtained from
the different mother-houses represented in the association, and pains
were taken to verify their correctness. The results so obtained are
given in the following table:[39]

Mother- Fields of
Conferences. houses. Sisters. Work.
1861 27 1,197 ?
1864 30 1,592 386
1868 40 2,106 526
1872 48 2,657 648
1875 50 3,239 866
1878 51 3,901 1,093
1881 53 4,748 1,436
1884 54 5,653 1,742
1888 57 7,129 2,263

Five additional houses had made application for entrance at the time the
table was made, and were received at the ensuing Conference, among which
was the Philadelphia mother-house of deaconesses in connection with the
Mary J. Drexel Home.

Over sixty mother-houses now belong to the association, and
notwithstanding the necessary loss of deaconesses from death or removal
from work since the preceding Conference, there are 1,476 more in number
now than then.