r of things, when it was a fundamental principle with
him that in the spiritual realm the natural is displaced and destroyed,
must have sounded strange to the Corinthians; and Paul himself evidently
felt the weakness of the argument and its inconsistency with his general
principles, for he closed with an appeal to the custom of the churches:
'We have no such custom, neither have the churches of God,' therefore
you have no right to adopt it. This was the most he could say. Evidently
he was on uncertain ground."

Those same restrictive traditions, which prevented the deaconesses from
taking part in public instruction or ministering in the congregation,
rendered their service imperatively necessary in many of the private
activities of the Christian Church. They instructed female catechumens
in the first principles of the new religion; they prepared them for
baptism, and by their attendance disarmed inimical criticism when this
sacrament was administered to women. To their hands was committed the
ministry of mercy. They relieved the sick, instructed the orphans,
consoled their sisters when in trouble, encouraged those who were
condemned to martyrdom, and were the official embodiment of that
characteristic fraternalism in the early Church which induced even their
heathen enemies to exclaim: "How these Christians love."

It was not essential that a woman appointed to the office of a deaconess
should be free to devote her whole time to the service of the Church.
The two slave girls whom Pliny examined by torture upon the rack, and of
whom he wrote to the Emperor Trajan, were very probably deaconesses. The
order was composed of virgins who were tried and trained by a life of
chastity and devotion and finally set apart to the office at the mature
age of forty; or--and this was more commonly the case--of devout and
sober-minded widows. In all probability Paul is referring to this order
in that which he says of widows in his first letter to Timothy. There he
writes: "Let none be enrolled as a widow under threescore years old,
having been the wife of one man, well reported of for good works; if she
hath brought up children, if she hath used hospitality to strangers, if
she hath washed the saints' feet, if she hath relieved the afflicted, if
she hath diligently followed every good work. But younger widows refuse:
for when they have waxed wanton against Christ, they desire to marry;
having condemnation, because they have rejected the