bidden; a suitable support is provided both for the time of active service and of disability; the service is that of caring for the poor and the sick, teaching and training the young, and reforming the immoral. And now shall we judge this ministry of women, both as to rightness and expediency, from a few commanding points of view? (1) Its central idea. Personal service, without publicity, not for but to the needy and the suffering, face to face-such is the formative principle of the deaconess' office. There are men and women who seek to rule. Some are Christian men and women. But great is the danger that these shall become deceivers of themselves and disturbers of the Church. There are men and women who seek to serve. Great is the promise that these shall become the true "apostles of the churches and the glory of Christ." Better than all romance or passion for poetic beauty is courageous love in homely and loathsome places. It calls hour by hour for that which is most heroic, even the giving of a self. It was the Highest and Mightiest who "went about doing good." In the consecration service of the Kaiserwerth deaconesses is the charge: "You are servants in a threefold sense; servants of the Lord Jesus, servants of the needy for Jesus' sake, servants of one another." (2) Its scriptural precedents. It has not been satisfactorily shown that the deaconess, like the deacon, was a recognized office-bearer in the apostolic churches. The passages supposed by some to prove it are unable to bear the strain of inference that has been put upon them. Phoebe of Cenchreæ may well have been a "servant” (diákovos) of the Church, in the non-official sense of that word-just as she was a "succourer” (πpoσrátis, protectress, patroness) of the apostle Paul and of many others.' The enrolled "widows" concerning whom directions were given to Timothy, as pastor of the church in Ephesus, were evi 1Rom. xvi. I, 2. dently aged and worthy beneficiaries rather than organized ministrants of the Church." The name "women” (yʊvaîkas, A. V. "wives”) in 1 Timothy iii. 11, may be understood to mean either wives of deacons or official deaconesses. But if the former be taken as the meaning, the fact that no qualifications for the wives of bishops are given remains to be accounted for; and if the latter, the fact that simply the word "women" or "wives," with no indication of their occupying an official position, is left unexplained. So the case is doubtful." It is quite certain, however, that of unofficial deaconesses there were not a few in the days of Jesus and the Apostles. For Christ had put honor upon woman and had made possible to her a ministry of Christian love, such as had never before glorified her life. When, therefore, in the post-apostolic age, Christianity went on to develop and perfect its organization, and the conditions of the time created a special demand for such services as woman could offer, it is no surprising thing that her ministrations should have taken some organized, or regulated, form. It was an institutional expression of the same spirit that prompted the women of Galilee to "minister of their substance" to the Master who had won their hearts' devotion, and Dorcas to make garments for the poor, and Lydia to constrain the messengers of the gospel to have their home in Philippi at her house, and Phoebe to be a resourceful helper of many, and Priscilla carefully to teach the "way of God," and Mary of Rome' to 11 Tim. v. 9, 10, 16. "Dean Howson has said: "It appears to me that if we take our stand simply on the ground of the New Testament, the argument for the recognition of Deaconesses as a part of the Christian ministry is as strong as the argument for episcopacy." (Cecilia Robinson, "The Ministry of Deaconesses," p. 15.) It may be so; but neither the ministry of deaconesses nor that of bishops, as now existing, can find its form in the New Testa ment. 'John iv. 27; xvi. 17; Acts i. 14; ii. 17, 18. "Luke viii. 3. 'Rom. xvi. 6. bestow much labor there, and Tryphæna, Tryphosa, and "Persis the beloved," to "labor in the Lord," and the household of Stephanas to "set themselves to minister (eis diakovíav) unto the saints.' We may even go back to an older and less Christian time for an example of such a ministry. For the ideal home-maker of the Old Testament was a ministering woman: She spreadeth out her hand to the poor; Yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy. She openeth her mouth with wisdom; And the law of kindness is on her tongue.3 (3) Its economic aim. "There is not in the world at this moment," says Hugh Price Hughes, "so costly and so utter a waste product as our average young lady-the daintiest bit of mechanism in the round world-cultured, dowered with love and enthusiasm and devotion, and courage too, yet mostly wasted, life mainly a thing of afternoon tea." Shall the "waste product" of this pungent criticism appear in the Church as well as in the family? Woman is not for dollhood. She is no more to be flattered into an idle passivity than to be degraded into a drudge. Let her distinctive powers be employed, in individual acts and habits indeed, but also through organization, for Christian service. Organization in any social sphere is for the avoidance of waste and the increase of power. It is to interrelate unguided forces, so as to make regular and perpetual that which might 1Rom. xvi. 12. 21 Cor. xvi. 15. "It was women such as Phoebe and Priscilla who created the idea of the female diaconate. Whether or no they received the name as an official title matters but little; they certainly 'executed the office' of a Deaconess, and bore splendid testimony to the value of a ministry of women. When the time for definite ecclesiastical organization came, the work of women had become a necessity to the Church, and they received at once [hardly at once] their place in her ordered ministry." (Cecilia Robinson, “Ministry of Deaconesses," p. 12.) 'Prov. xxxi. 20, 26. otherwise prove to be spasmodic and transient. Is the principle familiar even to triteness? Equally so should be the fact of its complete application to woman's work in the Church of Christ. Throughout the Church are women whose life is without the inner peace and outward efficiency which come through the acceptance of a recognized vocation. Yet many of them would find joy in a ministry to the poor, the untaught, the sorrowful. And the Church may open to them-as in the similar case of men who believe themselves called to the ministry of the gospel -the door of opportunity. It may offer them a home, food and raiment, companionship, direction, equipment, organization, the stimulus and support of a sisterhood of fellow-workers, with much trying self-denial in a noble and beautiful work. The Church would not hesitate to commission and trust them as missionaries abroad. It would send them there as teachers, nurses, physicians, Bible readers, organized woman workers in the gospel of Jesus. But to set them apart for similar work at home is equally an economy of both active and latent spiritual forces. Among other indirect benefits, would it not help to make it known to all the people, in this age of social and industrial unrest, that the Church, like her Lord, is among them "as one that serveth?" (4) Its fruits. The divine test, here as everywhere, must be applied. "And let her works praise her"-as undoubtedly they are doing "in the gates." VI. AUTHORITATIVE SUPERVISION: THE PRESBYTER —HIS EARLIER OFFICE. THE fact that the end of office is service does not disparage official oversight and authority. For these are themselves means of service-often the most difficult and the most fruitful of all. Imagine them discontinued from henceforth! "Our authority,” says the chief pastor of the Corinthians, "which the Lord gave for building you up and not for casting you down." Could there be a truer service than edification? I. NON-OFFICIAL OVERSIGHT MADE OFFICIAL. There is, to begin with, a non-official oversight and a nonofficial authority. In the purely private and personal relations of life one person may not only exercise watch-care over another, but may sometimes speak with an authoritative voice. "Full of goodness, filled with all knowledge," says the same chief pastor writing to the Romans, "able also to admonish one another," and in admonition there is a certain power of command, silent rather than expressed, that calls for obedience. "Ye younger," says another Apostle, "be subject unto the elder." Knowledge, wisdom, experience, character, age exert an authority, for the most part unconscions, over both belief and practice. "Be obedient," says even the great officialist, Ignatius of Antioch, "to .. one another.' 994 998 But this diffused oversight and authority must be concentrated. The few must act for the many. It has to be made the special business of some to oversee and rule, according to recognized divine laws of social conduct-always, let it be remem Rom. xv. 14. 1 Pet. v. 5. 12 Cor. x. 8. "To Magnesians," 13. So likewise "Clement to the Corinthians," 38: "Let every one be subject to his neighbor, according to the gift bestowed upon him." |