Let us examine the requirements for the diaconate of the early Church. The word diaconate means service; helpful service. We use the word to designate service for the Church of Christ; service that more particularly concerns itself with administering the charities of the Church and performing its duties of compassion and mercy. The men who were selected for this office were to be men of "honest report." They must have led a blameless life. Those who had repented of wrong-doing and reformed their lives were excluded from the office, because they had lost a good report "of them which are without." Pre-eminently they must be men of spiritual experience, proven Christians, "full of the Holy Ghost and of wisdom." They were also to have practical gifts that would make them efficient and capable in the duties of every-day life. 1 Tim. iii, 8. These are some of the qualifications spoken of as belonging to the diaconate, and are the same in application to either sex. The woman deacon must, however, besides possessing the above qualities, be unmarried or a widow. The married woman has her calling at home, and cannot combine with that an official calling in the Church, although she may be a valuable lay helper. The field of labor of the women deacons of apostolic times and of the present is essentially the same. 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. [1] _Heidenthum und Judenthum_, von Doellinger, p. 692. Regensburg, 1857. [2] MacMaster's _History of the United States_, vol. i, p. 102. [3] Statistics from _North American Review_, February, 1889, "Why am I a Missionary?" [4] _Deaconesses_, Rev. J. D. Howson, D.D., p. 236. CHAPTER II. DEACONESSES IN THE EARLY CHURCH. To understand the position of the deaconess with respect to the modern Church we must know something of the relation in which she stood to the early Church. Concisely as may be we must recall the story of the intervening centuries to the present, that we may learn the true position of deaconesses in modern times.