DEACONESSES.

“The breach though small at first, soon opening wide,

In rushes folly with a full-moon tide,

Then welcome errors of whatever size,

To justify it by a thousand lies.

As creeping ivy clings to wood or stone,

And hides the ruin that it feeds upon;

So sophistry cleaves close to and protects

Sin’s rotten trunk, concealing its defects.”

                                                              – Cowper.

      THE deacons of the New Testament, as we have seen, were preachers. They were assistants of the apostles. They aided them in spreading a knowledge of the Gospel; for they were to hold the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience. – 1 Tim. 3:9. They attended to the distribution of the charities of the church, and assisted in administering the sacraments.

      There is not, in the New Testament, the slightest intimation that the work of the deaconesses was, in any respect, different from that of the deacons.

      The office was one – the functions the same.

      A postmistress discharges all the duties, and enjoys all of the privileges of a postmaster.

      A Queen, who succeeds to the throne in her own right, possesses all the prerogatives of a King. Elizabeth of England was no less a sovereign than her father, Henry VIII, whom she succeeded.

      So a deaconess in the New Testament sense of the term, is simply a woman who possesses the functions and discharges the duties of a deacon. Mosheim, in speaking of the Church of the first century, says: “The church had ever belonging to it, even from its very first rise, a class of ministers, composed of persons of either sex and who were termed deacons and deaconesses. Their office was to distribute the alms to the necessitous; to carry the orders or messages of the elders wherever necessary; and to perform various other duties, some of which related merely to the solemn assemblies that were held at stated intervals, whilst others were of a general nature.”²³

      This opinion that the deacons and deaconesses were essentially the same, and were “a class of ministers,” is doubtless correct. Their duties in the “solemn assemblies” were, in the absence of an elder, to conduct the services and preach the word.

      “Learned men,” says the same historian, “have been led to conclude, and apparently with much reason, that those who had given unequivocal proof of their faith and probity in the capacity of deacons, were, after a while elected into the order of presbyters.”²⁴

      The practice of some of our modern churches of placing deacons where they belong, as an order in the ministry, eligible to promotion, and classing deaconesses among lay workers, without any possibility of ever rising to the higher ministries of the church, has neither reason nor Scripture for its support. It is giving a stone to those who call for bread. It is conferring a shadow and withholding the substance; it is bestowing a name and keeping back that which is implied in the name. In short it is a stupendous sham, of which any body of men claiming common honesty should be ashamed. It is an insult to womankind, and should be resented by them as such. Every woman should refuse to accept the name unless there is given with it all that is implied in the name.

      It is a wonderful presumption upon the ignorance or servility of its members, for a great church to say in its book of discipline: “The duty of a Traveling Deacon is:

      1. To administer Baptism and to solemnize Matrimony.

      2. To assist the Elder in administering the Lord’s Supper.

      3. To do all the duties of a Traveling Preacher.”

      “The duties of the deaconesses are to minister to the poor, visit the sick, pray with the dying, care for the orphan, seek the wandering, comfort the sorrowing, save the sinning, and, relinquishing wholly all other pursuits, devote themselves, in a general way, to such forms of Christian labor as may be suited to their abilities.”

      All these things may be good and important. That is not the question. But why make the duties of Deacons and Deaconesses so widely different? Why clothe the men deacons with ministerial dignity, and send them into the pulpit to preach, and into the altar to help administer the sacraments; and refuse these prerogatives to the women deacons, but send them to the garrets and cellars to hunt up the depraved, the destitute and the dying? Why give to the deacons the dignity and to the deaconesses the drudgery? What reason or Scripture is there for such partiality? The State does not make such odious distinctions. When Maria Theresa fell heir to the throne of Austria and Hungary, though the laws of Hungary recognized males only as successors to the Kingly power, she presented herself before her nobles with her babe in her arms, and the nobles, with one voice, shouted, “Hungarians, behold your King!” Not a monarch of her day had a more loyal following, or a more vigorous and glorious reign. Though a Queen she had all the prerogatives of a King.

      What would be thought of a Board of Education that, in its proposals for Teachers should say:

      “It shall be the duty of the School Master to instruct their pupils, maintain order and discharge the duties of a School Teacher.

      “It shall be the duty of the School Mistress to up poor children, provide for them, bind up the wounds of those that get hurt, and devote her whole time to labors among necessitous children.”

      All this might be necessary and useful, but the number of qualified female teachers who would apply for the position would be small.

      No. The disgraceful business of insulting womanhood, by giving to woman an office with an honorable name, and then divesting that office of the functions that belong to it when filled by a man, is confined to professed churches of Jesus Christ. Women ought to put an end to it by refusing to submit to such a glaring imposition.

      To relieve the suffering is a Christ like work. In it all Christians and especially Christian ministers should bear a part. If the church depute it to some of its more devoted female members, we will not complain, but the church should not dignify these almoners of its bounty with a ministerial title, and yet forbid them to exercise the functions belonging to that order of the ministry, which bears the same title.

“And the parson made it his text that

week and he said likewise,

That a lie which is half a truth is ever

the blackest of lies,

That a lie which is all a lie may be met

and fought with outright,

But a lie which is part a truth is a

harder matter to fight.”

                                 – Tennyson.

      That a Christian church may have women deacons is true; but this truth loses its essence by refusing to give to this office the functions that belong to it when filled by men.