tical gifts that
would make them efficient and capable in the duties of every-day life.
1 Tim. iii, 8.

These are some of the qualifications spoken of as belonging to the
diaconate, and are the same in application to either sex. The woman
deacon must, however, besides possessing the above qualities, be
unmarried or a widow. The married woman has her calling at home, and
cannot combine with that an official calling in the Church, although she
may be a valuable lay helper.

The field of labor of the women deacons of apostolic times and of the
present is essentially the same. The conditions of society and of the
Church, however, are totally dissimilar. We must, therefore, look to see
new adaptations of the same useful qualities. In other words, we shall
not expect to take the female diaconate of the days of the apostles and
transport it unchanged, into nineteenth century environments. We shall
rather expect to see the invariably useful qualities of the diaconate of
women adapted to the needs of the sinful, sorrowing, ignorant, and
helpless of the age in which we live.

[1] _Heidenthum und Judenthum_, von Doellinger, p. 692. Regensburg,
1857.
[2] MacMaster's _History of the United States_, vol. i, p. 102.
[3] Statistics from _North American Review_, February, 1889, "Why am
I a Missionary?"
[4] _Deaconesses_, Rev. J. D. Howson, D.D., p. 236.

CHAPTER II.

DEACONESSES IN THE EARLY CHURCH.

To understand the position of the deaconess with respect to the modern
Church we must know something of the relation in which she stood to the
early Church. Concisely as may be we must recall the story of the
intervening centuries to the present, that we may learn the true
position of deaconesses in modern times.

We have very little knowledge of the early Church. During the first
century and the first half of the second century continued persecution
compelled the religious communities of the new faith to live in almost
complete seclusion. For the same reason little has been left on record
of those years, and it is impossible to form clear conceptions of Church
history during the period. The first trace which we find of the
existence of deaconesses after the times of the apostles comes to us
from an entirely outside source--from the official records of the Roman
government. Shortly after the close of the first century the Emperor
Trajan sent the younger Pliny as prefect to Bithynia in Asia Minor.