Naturally the German Lutherans, who were well acquainted with the deaconess work in their native land, were the first to try to introduce it among their churches. In the yearly report sent out from Kaiserswerth, January 1, 1847, Fliedner mentions that an urgent appeal had been made to him to send deaconesses to an important city in the United States, there to have the oversight of a hospital, and to found a mother-house for the training209/205 of deaconesses. In the report for the following year Fliedner again refers to the call from America, and states his intention to extend his travels to the New World, and to take with him sisters who shall aid in founding a mother-house. In the summer of 1849 he was enabled to carry out his intention, and July 14, 1849, accompanied by four deaconesses, he reached Pittsburg, Pa., where Rev. Dr. W. A. Passavant, who had written so many urgent appeals for his aid, was awaiting him. The building had already been secured for a hospital and deaconess home, and, July 17, was solemnly dedicated at a service where Fliedner delivered the principal address, and a large audience testified to their interest.

Before his return to Europe Fliedner visited the New York Synod, and, in an English discourse, described the character and aims of Kaiserswerth, and commended the newly founded institution at Pittsburg to the sympathy and aid of the German Lutheran Church in America. No further results were reached, as the synod contented itself with resolving that “this Ministerium awaits with deep interest the result of the work made in behalf of the institution of Protestant deaconesses at Pittsburg.”1

The institution is occasionally heard of afterward210/206 in the proceedings of the Pittsburg Synod, and in the paper, The Missionary, published under the auspices of the same Church. Urgent appeals were also sent out for devoted Christian women to come to the aid of the sisters and to join their numbers; but although the hospital, commended by their skillful and able ministrations as nurses, had the full approval of the public, there were few, if any, who came to join them, and they were unduly burdened by a task too great for their small number.

There is, at the present time, only one of the original Kaiserswerth sisters left, and that is Sister Elizabeth, the head deaconess at Rochester. Dr. Passavant still continues to labor at forming a complete organization on the basis of the Kaiserswerth211/207 system, and, to quote the words of Dr. A. Spaeth, “As he succeeded forty years ago in bringing the first sisters over from Kaiserswerth to Pittsburg, I have no doubt that now, when the Church is at last awakening to the importance of this work, he will succeed in the completion of his undertaking.”

A more recent development of the deaconess work in the German Lutheran Church has arisen in connection with the German hospital in Philadelphia. The hospital was well equipped for its work, but there was much dissatisfaction with the nursing, which was inefficient and unskillful. In the fall of 1882 the hospital authorities turned for advice and co-operation to Dr. W. J. Mann, Dr. A. Spaeth, and other clergymen of the denomination in Philadelphia. It was determined to secure German deaconesses as nurses. Several attempts were made to induce Kaiserswerth, or some other large mother-house in Germany, to give up a few sisters to the hospital, but on all sides the applications were refused. The deaconesses were too greatly needed in the Old World to be spared for work in the New. At length, through the unremitting efforts of Consul Meyer, and of John D. Lankenau, president of the board of managers, a small independent community of sisters under the direction of Marie Krueger,212/208 who had herself been trained in Kaiserswerth, acceded to the proposal, and the head-deaconess, with six sisters, arrived in Philadelphia June 19, 1884. They left the field of their self-denying work in the hospital and poor-house at Iserlohn, in Westphalia, sadly to the regret of the authorities and citizens of the place, but to the hospital at Philadelphia they gave invaluable aid. From the first their good services met with appreciation. The efficiency of the hospital service was greatly increased; and from physicians and hospital authorities there was only one testimony, and that a most favorable one, to the value of deaconesses as trained nurses. Mr. Lankenau, who has ever been the wise and munificent patron of the institution, determined to insure a succession of these admirable nurses for the service of the hospital, and, at an expense of over five hundred thousand dollars, he built an edifice of palace-like proportions, and made over this munificent gift to the hospital corporation. It was accepted by them January 10, 1887. The western wing of the building is used as a home for aged men and women; the eastern wing is a residence and training-school for the deaconesses, the chapel uniting the two, and the whole being known as the Mary J. Drexel Home and Philadelphia Mother-house of Deaconesses.

The arrangement of the rooms for the sisters is similar to that at Kaiserswerth; each consecrated sister has a small apartment simply furnished for her own use. The older probationers are divided two and three in a room. Those who have recently entered are placed in two large rooms, but here every one has her own four walls—even if they are only made by linen curtains. When Elizabeth Fry first visited Kaiserswerth, among the arrangements214/210 that she at once recognized and commended was that by which each deaconess was given the privacy of her own apartment. In the deaconess houses that are so rapidly springing up in different parts of the United States this provision ought to be guarded with care, for a life that is so constantly drawn out in ministrations to others should have some moments of absolute privacy upon which no one can intrude.

For those who desire to form a good conception of the deaconess institutions as they are conducted215/211 in Germany, a visit to the Philadelphia Mother-house of Deaconesses will be fruitful of valuable suggestions.2

In July, 1887, a Swedish Lutheran pastor in Omaha sent a probationer to Philadelphia to be trained as a sister for a deaconess house to be established in that central city of the United States. In 1888 four others joined her, and the building of a hospital and deaconess home is now progressing by the generous support of all classes of philanthropists in Omaha. A deaconess home has also recently been founded by Norwegian Lutherans in South Brooklyn, L. I.

In the German Reformed Church a layman endeavored in 1866 to arouse interest in the deaconess office. The Hon. J. Dixon Roman, of Hagerstown, Md., at Christmas gave five thousand dollars to the congregation, and with it sent a proposition to the consistory that three ladies of the congregation should be chosen and ordained to the order of deaconesses, with absolute control of the income of said fund for the purposes and duties as practiced in the early days of the Church.³216/212 This, and the action of the Lebanon Classis in 1867, requesting the synod “to take into consideration the propriety of restoring the apostolic society of deaconesses,” seem to have been the only steps taken by those connected with this denomination.

In the Protestant Episcopal Church of America the bishop of Maryland first instituted an order of deaconesses in connection with St. Andrew’s Parish, Baltimore, Md. Two ladies gave themselves to ministering to the poor, and, with the sanction and approval of the bishop, a house was obtained and given the name of St. Andrew’s Infirmary. In 1873 there were four resident deaconesses and four associates.4 An early report of the infirmary says: “The deaconesses look to no organization of persons to furnish the pecuniary aid required by the demands of their position. Their first efforts have been for the destitute and sick. At the home they minister daily to the suffering and destitute sick wherever found; some requiring only temporary medical aid and nursing; others, whom God has chastened with more continuous suffering, requiring, in their penury, constant care and continual ministration.” There is also under217/213 their charge a church school for vagrant children, and one also for the children of those comfortably situated in life.

The “Forms for Setting Apart Deaconesses,” the “Rules for Self-Examination,” and the “Rules of Discipline” in the order of deaconesses in Maryland are largely patterned after the Kaiserswerth rules. In truth, the general questions for self-examination in regard to external duties, spiritual duties to the sick, the conduct of the deaconesses or sisters to those whom they meet, and the means for improving in the duties of the office are in many cases selected, and but slightly altered, from the series prepared by Pastor Fliedner.5 The influence of the devout German pastor is indelibly stamped upon the deaconess cause in whatever denomination it has developed during the nineteenth century.

In 1864 the deaconesses of the Diocese of Alabama were organized by Bishop Wilmer. Under the supervision of the bishop the three deaconesses with whom the order originated were associated in taking charge of an orphanage and boarding-school for girls. In 1873 there were five deaconesses, one probationer, and two resident associates.⁶

In the Church Home all of the work is done by218/214 the inmates. As in the foreign Homes, the deaconesses are provided with food and raiment, and during sickness or old age they are cared for at the expense of the order. They are forbidden to receive fee or compensation for their services. Any remuneration that is made is paid to the order. In one feature, however, the deaconesses of Alabama differ from either their German or English sisters, and that is in the care of their individual means. The “Constitution and Rules” says: “The private funds of deaconesses shall not be expended without the approval of the chief deaconess or the bishop.”7 This usage prevails in sisterhoods, but, outside of this instance, so far as the author has been able to learn is not known in deaconess institutions.

The rules for the associates in connection with the order are given somewhat at length, from which the following are taken. After defining an associate as a Christian woman desiring to aid the work of the deaconesses, and admonishing her that, although not bound by the rules of the Community, yet she must be careful to lead such a life as is becoming one associated in a work of religion and charity, she is requested “to state what kind of work she will undertake, under the direction of219/215 the chief deaconess, and to report the result to her at such intervals as may be agreed upon.” The following modes of assistance are suggested as most useful; namely, “to provide and make clothing for the poor; to collect alms; to procure work, or promote its sale; to teach in the school; to assist in music or other classes; to relieve the destitute; to minister to the sick; to visit and instruct the ignorant; to attend the funeral arrangements for the poor; and to take charge of or assist in the decoration of the church.”

In the Diocese of Long Island Bishop Littlejohn instituted an association of deaconesses by publicly admitting six women to the office of deaconess in St. Mary’s Church, Brooklyn, February 11, 1872. The association has not continued in the form in which it originated, but has now changed into the Sisterhood of St. John the Evangelist. Still this sisterhood retains many of the distinctive deaconess features. A sister may, for instance, withdraw220/216 from the sisterhood for proper cause. She labors without remuneration, and the sisters live together in a home, or singly, as they may please, in any place where their work is located.

In America, however, as in England, within the Episcopal Church sisterhoods are more influential and more rapid in their growth than are deaconess institutions. In a list of the sisterhoods of the Episcopal Church in America, given in the monthly magazine devoted to women’s work in the Church,8 fourteen sisterhoods are named, one religious order of widows, and two orders of deaconesses, one of which is that which is now changed into the Sisterhood of St. John the Evangelist.

In 1871 the Board of Missions of the Protestant Episcopal Church discussed at some length the relation of women’s work to the Church, and there resulted increased interest in the subject of sisterhoods and deaconess institutions. An effort has been made to obtain for the order of deaconesses a wider recognition than it now enjoys, as it simply has the support of the bishop within whose diocese the deaconesses are at work. To this end, in the221/217 General Convention of 1880, a canon was presented to the House of Bishops, and accepted by a large vote. But it reached the Lower House too late for consideration, and no further action has been taken since that time.

In the Minutes of the General Assembly for 1884, page 114, and of 1888, page 640, we find an overture asking if the education of deaconesses is consistent with Presbyterian polity, and, if so, should they be ordained, answered in the negative in the following words: “The Form of Government declares that in all cases the persons elected [deacons] must be male members. (Chap. 13. 2.) In all ages of the Church godly women have been appointed to aid the officers of the Church in their labors, especially for the relief of the poor and the infirm. They rendered important service in the Apostolic Church, but they do not appear to have occupied a222/218 separate office, to have been elected by the people, to have been ordained or installed. There is nothing in our constitution, in the practice of our Church, or in any present emergency, to justify the creation of a new office.” The next year an explanation of this action, which so obviously contradicts the facts of history, was asked, but the committee declined to say any thing more.

The Southern Presbyterian Church has proceeded further, and in the direction of the female diaconate, as it is characterized in its main features wherever it has existed, when it declares in its Book of Church Order, adopted in 1879, that “where it shall appear needful, the church session may select and appoint godly women for the care of the sick, of prisoners, of poor widows and orphans, and, in general, in the relief of the sick.”9

In isolated Presbyterian congregations deaconesses have already obtained recognition. At the Pan-Presbyterian Council, held in Philadelphia in 1880, Fritz Fliedner, the son of Dr. Theodor Fliedner, was present as a member, and through the influence of his words the Corinthian Avenue Presbyterian Church set apart five deaconesses, whose223/219 duty it should be to care for the poor and sick belonging to the congregation.

The very interesting article from which the quotation has just been made seems to think the term “deaconess” a misnomer for the Kaiserswerth deaconess, as she belongs to a community, whereas the deaconess of the early Church was attached to a congregation and belonged to a single church as an officer; but it may well be questioned whether the class of duties assigned to the deaconess of the early Church and of modern times alike, that is, the nursing of the sick, the care of the infirm in body and mind, the succoring of the unfortunate, and the education of children, are not the main characteristics of the office of a deaconess, while the fact of her connection with a number of like-minded women in community life is merely an external feature of the office as it has developed in the nineteenth century. Whatever form the question224/220 may assume, with the Presbyterian churches of Scotland and England so far committed to the adoption of the office of the deaconess as an effective part of the organization of the Church, it seems inevitable that the Presbyterian Church of America will have to meet this question in the near future.

The honor of practically beginning the deaconess work in connection with the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States belongs to Mrs. Lucy Rider Meyer, of the Chicago Training-school, who, during the summer months of 1887, aided by eight earnest Christian women, worked among the poor,225/221 the sick, and the needy of that great city without any reward of man’s giving. In the autumn the Home opened in a few hired rooms, and Miss Thoburn came to be its first superintendent. The story of the growth of the work, the securing of a permanent home, and the enlargement of its resources is a most interesting one.11

The Rock River Conference, within whose boundaries the Chicago Home is situated, had from the beginning an earnest sympathy and confidence in the work as it was developing in its midst. A memorial was prepared, and was presented to the General Conference in May, 1888, by the Rock River Conference, through its Conference delegates, asking for Church legislation with reference to deaconesses. At the same time the Bengal Annual Conference, through Dr. J. M. Thoburn, also presented a memorial asking for the institution of an order of deaconesses who should have authority to administer the sacrament to the women of India. Our missionaries in India have long felt the need of some way of ministering to the converted women who are closely secluded in zenana life, and who, though sick and dying, are precluded by the customs226/222 of the country from any religious service of comfort or consolation that male missionaries can render. If it had been possible for our women missionaries to administer the sacrament many Indian women could have been received into the Church. All of the papers and memorials on this subject were put into the hands of a committee, of which Dr. J. M. Thoburn (afterward made missionary bishop to India and Malaysia) was chairman; and the report of the committee was as follows:

It is doubtful if there was any measure taken at the General Conference of 1888 that will be more229/225 far-reaching in its results than that which instituted the office of deaconess. The full and complete recognition accorded by the highest authority of the Church commended it to the people, who showed a remarkable readiness to accept the provisions. Nearly simultaneously, at important points distinct from each other, steps were taken to establish deaconess homes, and to provide lectures and practical training to educate deaconesses for their work.

The terms of the law in which the Conference action was expressed were not closely defined. It was felt that in establishing a new office for a great Church there must be room for a wide interpretation, to meet the various exigencies that will arise. It is true, also, that there can be no final interpretation until there shall be a basis of experience wide enough and varied enough to furnish facts that will justify us in forming conclusions from them. Still it was thought by those who were practically engaged in the work that there should be a common agreement on certain practical points: What was to be the training that the deaconesses were to receive during the two years of “continuous service?” What was to be their distinctive garb? What was to be the relation of the deaconess homes, that were arising, to the230/226 Conference board appointed by the Annual Conference? To discuss these and other questions a Conference was held in Chicago, December 20 and 21, 1888, of those who were actively engaged in the work. The outcome of the deliberations was the “Plan for Securing Uniformity in the Deaconess Movement.” Regulations were suggested concerning homes and their connection with the Conference boards, conditions of admission were agreed upon, and a Course of Study and Plan for Training recommended.12 Of course the recommendations set forth in the “Plan” are not obligatory, but there has been remarkable unanimity so far in accepting them.

In addition to the Chicago Deaconess Home, and the branch in New Orleans, there is the Elizabeth Gamble House in Cincinnati, of which Miss Thoburn is superintendent; the Home in New York city, instituted by the Board of the Church Extension and Missionary Society, under the superintendence of Miss Layton; the home in Detroit, under the auspices of the Home Missionary Society; and homes under way or projected in Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Minneapolis; while individually deaconesses are employed in Kansas City,231/227 Jersey City, Troy, and Albany. It is also well to add that since his return to India, Bishop Thoburn has opened a deaconess house in Calcutta, with four American ladies as deaconesses, while at Muttra a second home has been opened, of which Miss Sparkes, so long connected with our mission work in India, is superintendent.

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. It was a happy inspiration—shall we not say a providential one?—that furnished a convenient organization for the office under present conditions. The mother-houses in Germany offered good working-models, and their practical advantages were so obvious that in whatever Protestant denomination the diaconate of women has revived, it has been in connection with these homes. There is no place where the233/229 training of a deaconess in all its aspects can be so well obtained as in the deaconess home and training-school, which is our synonym for the German mother-house.

Then, too, there is a tradition of service in such a home. One deaconess learns from another. The physician is at hand to give his suggestions and medical instruction, and the lectures on Church history, on the history of missions, and on methods of evangelization make the home a center of information on all questions that affect the usefulness of the office. There is no other one place in which to obtain the practical and theoretical instruction234/230 that is needed for the education of a deaconess well equipped for her work.

Before the birth of Christ hospitals were unknown.235/231 It is true that in Rome and Athens a certain provision was made for the poor, and largesses were given them from time to time. But this was done from motives of political expediency, and not from sympathy or commiseration with their ills. But as soon as the early Christians were free to practice their religion openly, hospitals arose in all the great cities. In the latter half of the fourth century the distinguished Christian teacher, Ephrem the Syrian, in Edessa, placed rows of beds for the sick and starving. His contemporary, Basil, the great bishop of Cæsarea, founded a number of institutions for strangers, the poor, and the sick, caring especially for the lepers.1 Little houses were built closely together, but so that the patients could be separated one from another, and cared for separately. Even at that early date the hospitals were arranged into divisions for either sex, as they are at the present time. To use a modern phrase, the wards of the men patients were placed under the charge of a deacon while the deaconesses ministered to the sick of their own sex, according as their services were required. “It was a rule for the deacons and deaconesses to seek for the unfortunate day by day, and to inform the bishops, who in turn, accompanied236/232 by a priest, visited the sick and needy of all classes.”2

In the Middle Ages there were orders of Hospitallers, consisting of laymen, monks, and knights, who devoted themselves entirely to the care of the sick. Under their influence great and splendid hospitals were built, of which the old Hôtel Dieu in Paris was a conspicuous example. The Hospital of the Holy Ghost in Rome, and the service of the same order, originated like hospitals all over Europe. In late years, with the development of medical and surgical art, hospital arrangements have arrived at a degree of perfection never before known; and the care of the sick, as it has been studied and practiced by Protestant deaconesses and Catholic Sisters of Mercy, has also greatly improved.

The state to which the hospitals had degenerated in Fliedner’s time, and the need of experienced nurses who should be actuated by the highest Christian motives, were among the strong reasons he advanced for providing the Church with deaconesses as helpers. Here are his words:³ “The poor237/233 sick people lay heavily on my mind. How often had I seen them neglected, their bodily wants miserably provided for, their spiritual needs quite forgotten, withering away in their often unhealthy rooms like leaves in autumn; for how many cities, even those having large populations, were without hospitals! And I have seen many on my travels in Holland, Brabant, England, and Scotland, as in our own Germany; I often found the portals of glittering marble, but the nursing and care were wretched. Physicians complained bitterly of the drunkenness and immorality of the attendants, and what shall I say of the spiritual care? In many hospitals preachers we’re no longer found; hospital chaplains yet more seldom. In the pious olden time these men were always in such institutions, especially in the Netherlands, where evangelical hospitals bore the beautiful name of “God’s house,” because it was recognized that God especially visits the inmates of such houses, to draw them to himself. Do not such wrongs cry to heaven? Is not our Lord’s reproachful word addressed to us, ‘I was sick and in prison and ye visited me not?’ And shall not our Christian women be capable and willing to undertake the care of the sick for Christ’s sake?” It was by such words, and similar ones, as in his famous appeal “Freiwillige vor” (Volunteers to the front!)238/234 which he sent out from Wurtemberg to Basel in 1842, that he aroused the Christian women of Germany to give themselves to this service. By their aid he instituted a system of nursing that has changed the aspect of every hospital ward in Germany; and, through the training that Florence Nightingale enjoyed at Kaiserswerth, the reform that was there instituted passed to England, and has effected a transformation in the entire hospital system of England.

The usefulness of deaconesses as care-takers in all kinds of hospitals and homes for the aged, and asylums of every description, is so apparent that it does not need to be dwelt upon. The crèche, or239/235 day home, where infants and young children can be sheltered and watched during the day while their mothers are at work, is an institution that started in Paris in 1834, through the efforts of M. Marbeau, one of the mayors of a district of the city. This is now incorporated into the government system of Paris, and the idea has spread to neighboring lands, so that such homes are found in many of the cities in South Germany and Switzerland. It is true that there are no nurses that can care for children as the true mother, but where mothers have to be absent from morning until night engaged at hard work, and the little ones are left neglected at home, or in the care of other children who are themselves young enough to need very nearly the same attention that is bestowed on the infants; or where the mothers are such in name, but in reality are failing in every quality which we attach to that sacred office; or where the foundling hospital is the only alternative to which the real mother, confronted by the necessity of earning bread for herself and child, can turn—in such cases the crèche is a real benefaction whose existence has enabled families to keep together, and children to be given a chance in life who otherwise would have had small prospect of keeping soul and body together.

There is another institution, called the waiting-school,240/236 where children from two to four years of age are received, whose parents both go daily to work, and who would be left to wander about the streets unless this place of refuge were opened to them. The crèche, or day home, seeks only to watch over the infants who are put in its care, or to amuse them and keep them contented; the waiting-school goes further, and tries to give the little ones some ideas of discipline and the elementary beginnings of instruction. Fliedner, who was a lover of children, took great interest in both these institutions, and in his school for infant-school teachers prepared deaconesses especially for the duties that are required in teachers of this class. The motherly heart, the gift of story-telling and singing, a pleasant and unruffled demeanor, the quiet but firm inculcation of order and obedience—these and other qualities Fliedner sought to develop in instructors for these schools.

The day homes have already been introduced into many places in the United States, and often cover the field of both the crèche and waiting-school, but there is a wide opportunity for the extension of their usefulness; and whether in the future, when the demands upon Christian deaconesses shall be much more multiplex than they are now, it may be necessary to provide special training for241/237 Christian teachers in America for such special work, time alone can decide. The question of Christian education is one that has not yet been determined in its full extent. In the year 1800 Mother Barat, of the Catholic Church, founded the order of Sisters of the Sacred Heart, which is especially devoted to the education of daughters belonging to the higher social ranks. At her death it numbered three thousand five hundred members, and had over seventy establishments, which are located in every civilized land. It cannot be maintained that the education given in these schools is either extensive or profound, but the influence of the order upon the women whom it has reached has been both. Fliedner, at Kaiserswerth, went as far as his age and environments would permit him to go. He provided schools where teachers were prepared as instructors for all grades of schools, from the most elementary up to the girls’ high-schools; and no other institution in Germany, with one or two exceptions, such as the Victoria Institute at Berlin, yet offers positions to women teachers of a higher grade than is afforded by these schools. But in other lands, where the educational facilities for women are far beyond those that Germany can offer at the present time, positions of higher importance and wider influence are held by women; and242/238 it is an important question for the future what class of women shall fill these places. If Fliedner had had to meet the problem we can imagine he would have done so with the boldness and energy that he showed in solving those that his times and circumstances afforded him. He would, doubtless, have enlisted among his deaconesses those whose talents gave him reason to provide them with the widest training the schools can offer; and then he would have endeavored to place them where they could do the most effective service for Christ and his Church. It may be that in the future which opens before the women of the Methodist Episcopal Church of America there will be just such questions seeking and finding solution.

Doubtless at the present time the deaconess who will answer to the greatest number of immediate wants is the “parish-deaconess,” or the home mission deaconess, as we may call her. Her usefulness has been well tested in the great cities of Germany, France, and England, as we have seen. Perhaps nowhere is her work better appreciated than in London, the greatest city of modern times. The tendency of this age of manufactures and commerce is to attract laborers and workers from country homes, where work has become less open to them through the increased use of agricultural243/239 machines of all kinds, into cities, where factories, shops, counting-rooms, and offices constantly afford openings. London has felt the full force of this movement. In 1836 her population was about equal to that of New York, including Brooklyn and Jersey City. Now the great city contains 5,500,000 inhabitants. It is growing at the rate of over 100,000 a year, nor is there any influence at work to stop its growth. The same causes that produce it are constantly at work. The great massing of the population together, with the unequaled increase in the wealth of the people, make the contrast of riches and poverty striking and obvious. 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. It is difficult for those who are at ease, whose lives, to use Wordsworth’s felicitous phrase, are made up “of cheerful yesterdays and confident to-morrows”—it is difficult for such even faintly to apprehend the dullness, the drudgery, and the hardships of those who, even at the best estate, are obliged to live in such surroundings. The vast metropolis a few years ago was for a short time shaken out of its lethargy by244/240 a voice that would be heard, when The Bitter Cry of Outcast London was published. “Few who will read these pages have any conception of what these pestilential human rookeries are, where tens of thousands are crowded together amid horrors which call to mind what we have heard of the middle passage of the slave-ship. To go into them you have to penetrate courts reeking with poisonous malodorous gases arising from accumulations of sewerage, refuse scattered in all directions, and often flowing beneath your feet; courts, many of them, which the sun never penetrates, which are never visited by a breath of fresh air. You have to ascend rotten stair-cases, grope your way along dark and filthy passages swarming with vermin. Then, if you are not driven back by the intolerable stench, you may gain admittance into the dens in which these thousands of beings herd together. Eight feet square! That is about the average size of many of these rooms…. Where there are beds they are simply heaps of dirty rags, shavings, or straw, but for the most part the miserable beings find rest only upon the filthy boards…. There are men and women who lie and die day by day in their wretched single room, sharing all the family trouble, enduring the hunger and the cold, without hope, without a single ray of comfort, until God245/241 curtains their staring eyes with the merciful film of death.”4

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. 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. Nothing but a strong indomitable faith in God’s love and promises can stand the strain of246/242 such work. 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. He came as a Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief, and it was the “common people” that heard Him gladly. The deaconess, in her distinctive dress, is becoming a well-known figure in the east of London, and not only protected but recommended by her garb, she visits the lowest parts of the city without danger. 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. In some cities there are247/243 whole foreign colonies where the people speak a foreign tongue, read foreign newspapers, and have very few interests in common with the people of the land in which they live. They continue the same customs and the same habits of thought that belonged to them in the Old World. Examples of such colonies are found in the thirty thousand Poles in Buffalo, and the sixty thousand Bohemians in Chicago.

Then the cities offer attractions that are irresistible to the young men and women from the country. Thousands leave quiet country homes every year, and, with no certain prospects before them, cast themselves into the busy life of the nearest great metropolis. In many places, especially in New England, the villages number less, and farm land is much less valuable than it was fifty years ago. 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 preponderating number of native Americans are Protestants,248/244 and their thoughts and beliefs are permeated with the principles that their fathers held so dear, and which they sacrificed home and country to preserve. They hold a faith that is inseparably connected with free institutions, personal liberty, and personal responsibility. But the mass of foreigners that are in the great cities largely belong to the working-class, and, with the large proportion of the poor who are the wards of the city, are Roman Catholic in faith, a faith that has little in sympathy with republican institutions, and which least prepares its followers to exercise the duties of citizens of a republic. Keeping these facts in mind, the statistics contained in the following extracts are of telling force: “If the laboring class should contribute its due proportion to the congregations, the churches, many of which are now half empty, would not begin to hold the people. In 1880 there was in the United States one evangelical organization to every 516 of the population; in Boston, counting churches of all kinds, there was but one to every 1,600 of the population; in Chicago, one to every 2,081; in New York, one to every 2,468; in St. Louis, one to every 2,800.” “The worst of it is that, instead of improving, the condition of things has been growing worse every year. While the prosperous classes are moving away to the suburbs,249/245 and the laborers are being more densely massed together in the heart of the city, the church accommodations, even if fully used, are becoming more inadequate to the needs of the community. Including religious organizations of all sorts, New York had in 1830 one place of worship for every 1,853 of its inhabitants; in 1840, one for every 1,840; in 1850, one for every 2,095; in 1860, one for every 2,344; in 1870, one for every 2,004; in 1880, one for every 2,468; and the religious history of Chicago is even more noteworthy in this respect: Chicago had in 1840 one church for every 747 of its population; in 1851 there was one for every 1,009; in 1862, one for every 1,301; in 1870, one for 1,593; in 1880, one for 2,081; in 1885, one for 2,254. All the large cities have districts which are destitute of church accommodations, and have not seats in Sunday-school for more than one tenth of their children.”5

Have we not as great need of deaconesses as any of the cities of the Old World? Most of our pastors stand alone. They do not have the assistant curates and pastors that are connected with large city churches in Berlin and London. 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; how to enlighten the ignorance that is so common without wounding the susceptibilities that are so human. For, to quote the words of the Christ in the Vision of Sir Launfal: