helpful in removing some of the misunderstandings that are liable to
arise among men of positive convictions.

On the third Sunday in Advent, 1898, Sister Emma Steen, of Richmond,
Indiana, the first Lutheran deaconess to engage in parish work in New
York, was installed in Christ Church. She had received her preparation
for this ministry in the motherhouse at Kaiserswerth on the Rhine, and
was one of the first six sisters to enter the motherhouse of the General
Synod in Baltimore. After four years of faithful service she was
succeeded by Sister Regena Bowe who has now for fifteen years by her
devoted work illustrated the value of the female diaconate in the work
of our churches in New York. Deaconeses are now laboring in seven of
our churches. They are needed in a hundred congregations.

The revival of this office is due to the genius and zeal of Pastor
Fliedner who established the first motherhouse at Kaiserswerth on the
Rhine in 1833. In America there are eight motherhouses with an
enrollment of 378 sisters.*
*In 1885 the author was appointed chairman of a committee of the
General Synod to report on the practicability of establishing the office
of deaconess in the parish work of our American churches. In pursuit of
information he visited the principal Deaconess Houses of Europe. His
reports were published in the Minutes of the Synod from 1887 to 1897 and
contributed to the introduction of the office into the Synod's scheme of
church work.

The years under review, the closing period of the nineteenth century,
were years of stress and storm in our synodical relations. But the
questions that divided us did not stop the practical work of the synods.
Under the stimulus of a generous rivalry some things were accomplished
and foundations were laid for still larger work in the new century.

In the Twentieth Century
1900-1918

Our churches entered the twentieth century with hope and cheer. With an
enrollment of 94 congregations in the greater city and an advance patrol
of many more in the Metropolitan District, it had become an army of
respectable size among the forces striving for the Christian uplift of
our city.

What a contrast between this picture and that of our church at the
beginning of the nineteenth century! Then two moribund congregations
were feebly holding the fort. One of these soon surrendered, "on account
of the present embarrassment of finances." Now a compact army had
already been assembled, whi