Jane M. Bancroft

“ But if there is the faith and love to deny self and dare all “for the love of Christ and in His name,” where can such rewards for labor be found? The dull streets become filled with friends, sodden countenances brighten, the little children come with loving faces and gladdened hearts, and the deaconess is recognized as interpreting to the hearts of these weary, forlorn, helpless people the love of God who, when He came upon earth, shared the burdens that belonged to His humanity. ”

“ I do not suppose there was ever a time in the history of Christianity in which the openings for holy, disciplined, intelligent women to labor in God’s vineyard were so numerous as at present. The population in towns and rural districts are waiting for the patient and enduring love that dwells in the breast of a truly pious woman, to wake them up to thought and feeling. ”

“ Such are the places where the deaconesses of East London go in and out from morn to eve, like angels of mercy, succoring the miserable and unhappy, often rebuking vice, and encouraging with friendly words those who are worn and discouraged in the battle of life. Here they nurse the sick, hold mothers’ meetings, start evening classes for working young men, and gather the children of all ages in every kind of class that can interest and instruct them. They are always ready to provide for individual cases that they meet. ”

“ It is this massing of population that is causing us already to experience some of the evils that are old problems in the great cities of Europe. There is the same gulf between the rich and the poor, with the added element that the great mass of the poor are composed of foreigners and their children. And the difference in race is a hinderance to a common ground of sympathy. A greater hinderance is the difference in religious faith. ”

“ The field of work of the deaconess in modern times is a large one. It would be easier to define what it is not than what it is. In orphanages, in asylums for fallen women, in women’s prisons, in reform schools, in Sunday-schools, infant schools, and higher schools, in classes among working-girls and servants, in industrial homes, in asylums for the blind and deaf and dumb, in hospitals of various kinds, and in churches, working under the direction of the pastor—in all of these relations and many others we find deaconesses in Germany, France, England, and other European countries. ”

“ In no other country have women borne so conspicuous a part in the promotion of moral and philanthropic causes.... Their services in dealing with charities and reformatory institutions have been inestimable.... The nation, as a whole, owes to the active benevolence of its women, and their zeal in promoting social reforms, benefits which the customs of continental Europe would scarcely have permitted women to confer.... Those who know the work they have done and are doing in many a noble cause will admire still more their energy, their courage, their devotion. ”

“ Each deaconess is expected to obey those who are placed over her, and to accept the kind of work assigned her, except in the case of contagious diseases, when her permission is asked. What a tribute it is to these women that such a refusal has never yet been known! ”

“ There are eighteen cottages, a large, generous school-room, a small infirmary for the sick, and a little church. About two hundred children of criminals and the unfortunate class are here cared for. Instead of allowing them to drift away and to perpetuate vice, crime, and immorality, they are taken entirely from their old surroundings, and new influences of knowledge and purity are thrown about them. There is no part of Mrs. Meredith’s mission which has such hope for the future and is so valuable in results as this preventive work among the children. ”

“ If they find a friendless young servant-girl who is out of work, they send her to the servants’ home, where, for very little payment, sometimes nothing at all, she can be taken care of long enough to give her fresh courage and strength. Then she is aided in seeking a situation, and so she is saved from the innumerable temptations to vice and misery that are sure to assail her if she stands alone.
Many of these deaconesses are educated women, gladly devoting their whole life and energies to the work, and who with “food and raiment” are quite content. ”

“ Shall there be no difference in persons? shall women also be priests? Answer.045/41 If thou desirest to behold Christians, so must thou see no differences, and must not say, That is a man or a woman, that is a servant or a lord, old or young. They are all one, simply Christian people. Therefore are they all priests. They may all publish God’s word, save that women shall not speak in the church, but shall let men preach. But where there are no men, but women only, as in the nuns’ cloisters, there might a woman be chosen who should preach to them. ”

“ Every morning, as the gate of Millbank prison swings back to allow those who have been released from penal bondage to come forth, a sister stands waiting to invite those who will go with her to a room near by, where breakfast awaits them; there are ladies to inquire about their plans and to offer them work. A great laundry was opened in 1867 to provide employment for these women. Here washing is done for two classes: for the poor and sick, to whom the service is given as a charity, and to those who pay for the work and whose money enables the mission to be partly self-supporting. ”

“ During these seven centuries whenever there arose a reviving spirit of true love to God, whether within the Church of Rome or in any of the churches formed from reforming elements that separated from it, then we find traces of the diaconate of woman assuming some form of devotion to Christ and work for him. One of these movements well worth our study originated in Belgium while the last of the Greek deaconesses were still daily walking the arched pathway that led to their church in Constantinople. ”

“ This Church has over a million women enrolled as members, able to serve it in every capacity, from the lady in her home dispensing gracious Christian hospitality, to the one standing quite alone, who will welcome, as a brevet of rank, this new call to service. There are many such women ready to respond. Many, too, whose hearts have been left desolate by bereavement, who will be glad to fill the empty hands and vacant life by work for God and humanity. ”

“ When the minister makes pastoral calls, and, entering working-men’s homes, finds sickness and scanty resources,250/246 he has no deaconess to call to his aid with her cheerful words of encouragement and her loving sympathy, that are better than money and medicine. It is not charity alone that is wanted in such cases; it is the knowledge of how to use proper means to make the sick one comfortable, how to lessen the burden on the family that a small additional call for work and care has so sadly taxed ”

“ The inmates of the Training-school are not deaconesses alone. The school was started to prepare workers for the foreign field, but the crying need of the vast metropolis turned attention to the home field. The Church of England Zenana Society sends its candidates to Mrs. Pennefather for training, and she is glad to accept them, believing that a variety of companionship is needed by those who, in zeal for their personal work, might lose the broad sympathy for all kinds of Christian labor, which is an invaluable cultivation for wise and useful laborers. ”

“ The good that can be accomplished by deaconesses working together with ministers in behalf of145/141 the manifold interests of the Church is incalculable. The most faithful pastor can make only short and unsatisfactory visits. Many sorrows which he overlooks the deaconess can discern and assuage. She knows best how to reach the heart of a sorrowing woman, to care for her needs, to discern her wants, and to bring solace to the sorrowing and succor to the needy. Deaconesses who have been specially trained for service cannot be spared now that the world has learned to know of them. ”

“ Gifts of clothes or food or fuel are not so well appreciated as the respectful hearing which clothes the teller with self-respect, the kind word and loving sympathy that feed the heart, the inspiring consolations of religious faith that animate and warm the soul, and such gifts women of sympathetic Christian hearts can ever render. ”

“ The lawn, with its quiet, shady walks, furnished with comfortable garden seats, provides a meeting place for friends, where, in the intervals between the services, those who perhaps never see each other during any of the other fifty-one weeks of the year may walk or sit together. “Here in more ordinary times may be seen the children of the Orphanage (where thirty-six girls form a happy, busy family) playing together, or the deaconesses in their becoming little white caps, who have run out for a breath of air. ”

“ The west of London, with its vast wealth, its homes of refinement and elegance, and its appliances for the enjoyment of art, science, and literature, is separated from the poverty, the degradation, the misery, and the sorrow of the East End by a gulf as great as that which separated Lazarus from Dives. ”

“ There are two classes of deaconesses formally recognized, nurses and teachers; although there is another, deaconess whose work is year by year becoming more important, and that is the deaconess who is attached to a church in the capacity of a home missionary. She is designated by the term “commune-deaconess,” or, as the English translate it, “parish-deaconess.”
Those who desire to become nurse-deaconesses must have the elements of a common school education, must be in good health, and, as a general rule, be over eighteen and not over forty years of age. ”

“ A pamphlet entitled The Deaconess Institution and Training Home says: “Are there not many parts all over Scotland—mines, quarries, etc.—where the population is poor and hard-working? Would it not in such places be an advantage both to minister and people to have a Christian lady, trained, experienced, and devoted, to live and work among them? Or, which would be possible in every parish, would it not be a great advantage that203/199 in case of need—in a mining accident, an outbreak of sickness—a trained Christian nurse should be available during the emergency?” ”

“ Just such deaconesses are needed in the cities of America. The cities of the United States are increasing as wonderfully as the great cities of the Old World. With the surplus population of Europe pouring in upon us by the hundreds of thousands annually our country is doubling in numbers every twenty-five years; and the growth of the towns absorbs a larger proportion of this multitude than does the country. The cities attract the immigrants because there they find others of their own nationality. ”

“ There are many devout Christian women in every community who have for years been deaconesses in labors, if not in title and prerogatives. It is very important for such women to give their sympathies and fostering care to this new institution. If not deaconesses by office, they can ally themselves as260/256 associates. The associate is a real officer in many of the deaconess establishments in London. Ladies who have great sympathy with the cause, and an earnest desire to do what they can to advance it, give some portion of their time, their labor, or their means to promote its interests. ”

“ The deaconesses of the early Church differed from those of modern times, as we have seen, in being directly responsible to a church society, and in belonging to a church congregation in numbers of two or more. Modern life shows a strong tendency to organization. Wherever there are workers in a common cause they are banded together in societies and associations. It was in accordance with the spirit of the age in which he lived that Fliedner united his workers in the Rhenish-Westphalian Deaconess Society, in 1836. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Besides the advantages of a permanent home, under careful supervision, to which the probationers and deaconesses have access, in such a home care is taken to train the deaconesses in the doctrines of the Church, and there is an atmosphere favorable to the virtues of faith and devotion that the work demands. The deaconesses are never allowed to forget that they serve in a threefold capacity: “Servants of the Lord Jesus; servants of the sick and poor, ‘for Jesus’ sake;’ servants one to another.” ”