God-fearing,
pious women possess for the up-building of Christ's kingdom as soon as
they have opportunity to develop it?"[29]

His practical experience with the work he had in hand brought him to the
same conclusion; namely, that there must be training-schools where
Christian women, especially set apart for such service, could have
instruction and practice in the duties they had undertaken. As a
consequence there were drawn up in May, 1836, and signed by Fliedner and
a few friends, the statutes of the Rhenish-Westphalian Deaconess
Society.

Fliedner had now reached the work that was henceforth to be his life
mission; that is, the restoration of deaconesses to the Christian Church
of the nineteenth century.

[25] _Denkschrift zur Jubelfeier_, J. Disselhoff, Kaiserswerth,
1886, p. 8.
[26] Schaefer, _Die Weibliche Diakonie_, vol. ii, p. 86; _Denkschrift
zur Jubelfeier_, p. 9.
[27] T. Fliedner, _Kurzer Abriss seines Lebens_, p. 43.
[28] T. Fliedner, _Kurzer Abriss seines Lebens_, p. 48.
[29] _Kurzer Abriss seines Lebens_, p. 60.

CHAPTER V.

THE INSTITUTIONS AT KAISERSWERTH.

Fliedner saw clearly that if the office of deaconess were to be planted
in the Church there must be soil suitable to nourish it: in other words,
there must be an institution founded which could furnish not only
instruction, but practice in their duties, and a home for those who
should offer their services for this office. "But," he says, "could our
little Kaiserswerth be the right place for a Protestant deaconess house
for the training of Protestant deaconesses--a village of scarcely
eighteen hundred people where the large majority of the population were
Roman Catholics, where sick people could not be expected in sufficient
numbers for training purposes, and so poor that it could not help defray
even the yearly expenses of such an institution? And were not older,
more experienced pastors than I better adapted for this difficult
undertaking? I went to my clerical brethren in Duesseldorf, Dinsberg,
Mettmann, Elberfeld, and Barmen, and entreated them to start such an
institution in their large societies, of which, indeed, there was
pressing need. But all refused, and urged me to put my hand to the work.
I had time, with my small congregation, and the quietness of retired
Kaiserswerth was favorable to such a school. The useful experiences I
had gained on my journeys had not been given me for naught, and God
coul