(f.) On occasion she was a mediator when there was strife in families, or among friends. Both to deacons and deaconesses "pertain messages, journeys to foreign parts, ministrations, services." The ever-to-be-remembered journey of Phebe to Rome, when a whole system of theology was committed to her keeping, was quite within the sphere of her duties. It has also been said that to them was given the safe-keeping of the holy books in periods of persecution. The enumeration of these principal duties implying so many lesser details helps us to understand that "deaconesses are needed for many purposes" (Book ii, chapter xv). The deaconess was ordained to her work, as is attested by a great number of authorities.[8] "It was because men felt still that the Holy Ghost alone could give power to do any work to God's glory that they deemed themselves constrained to ask such power of him, in setting a woman to do Church service."[9] The following beautiful prayer of ordination, attributed to the apostle Bartholomew, bears within it certain proofs of the very early existence of the ceremony, as well as of the order of deaconesses: "Eternal God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Creator of man and women, who didst fill Miriam and Deborah and Hannah and Huldah with thy Spirit, and didst not disdain to suffer thine only-begotten Son to be born of a woman; who also in the tabernacle and temple didst appoint woman-keepers of thine holy gates, look down now upon this thine handmaid, who is designated to the office of deaconess, and cleanse her from all filthiness of the flesh and of the spirit, that she may worthily execute the work intrusted to her to thine honor, and to the praise of thine Anointed, to whom, with thee and the Holy Ghost, be honor and adoration forever. Amen." The allusion to the creation of man and woman, to the women in the Old Testament who were called to special service, as well as to Mary, the mother of the Lord, while no reference is made to the women of the apostolic Church who were so highly commended, and held in veneration as worthy of all imitation, go to prove that the origin of this prayer was so near the time of the apostles as to be almost contemporary with them. The office of the deaconess, as described by the _Apostolic Constitutions_, fitted into the needs of the Eastern Church and the requirements of Greek life. It was in the East that the diaconate of women originated, and here that it attained its greatest growth. In the West custom did not demand the careful separation of the sexes as in the East, and church relations were less bound by social usages; consequently we meet with fewer references to deaconesses in the works of the Latin fathers, and the diaconate of women is not so deeply rooted in the affections of the church communities as we have found it in the Greek Church.[10]