offers such guidance as history, observation, and earnest
reflection yield on the question at issue.

EDWARD G. ANDREWS.
NEW YORK, _May 10, 1889_.

DEACONESSES IN EUROPE.

CHAPTER I.

THE DIACONATE.

In the ruins of the old cities of Greece and Rome we find buildings that
were used for public purposes of all kinds--forums, theaters,
amphitheaters, circuses, and temples of worship. Every provision was
made for the entertainment of the people, and for their political and
intellectual needs. But nowhere do we find the ruins of structures,
belonging either to the public or to private individuals, indicating
that any attempt was ever made to care for the feeble-minded, the
insane, the deaf, the blind, the sick, or the aged; those that in every
nation of modern times are the wards of the State and the definite
objects of religious ministrations.

The ruins cannot be found because such buildings never existed. No
provision was made for those suffering from bodily infirmities, because
so far as the State could control circumstances they were not allowed
to exist. Children who were defective in any way were put to death. In
Sparta this measure was carried out under government supervision. Even
Plato in his model republic has all children of wicked men, the
misshapen, or the illegitimate put out of existence, that they may not
be a burden to the State.[1]

With the coming of Christ new elements were introduced into the
civilization of the world; elements of kindliness, of compassion, of
sympathy of man toward his fellow-man, that up to this time had not been
known. There was a new revelation of the brotherhood of all men in the
fatherhood of God: "We are all one in Christ Jesus."

This spirit of compassion and of sympathy has grown with every century
in the Christian era, and at no time has it been stronger in the history
of the world than it is to-day. Well has one American historian said:

"To a generation which knows but two crimes worthy of death, that
against the life of the individual and that against the life of the
State; which has expended fabulous sums in the erection of
reformatories, asylums, and penitentiaries, houses of correction,
houses of refuge, and houses of detention all over the land; which has
furnished every State prison with a library, with a hospital, with
workshops, and with schools, the brutal scenes on which our ancestors
loo