Go back to the history of the first church in every town: see how the minister knew the story of every heart in his parish; how he kept his eye on every lonely boy or orphan girl; how widowed mothers took his counsel about schools and rents; how forlorn old maids trusted to him to make all "things come round right;" how the lad, inclining to wild courses, found no better friend than he. How is it now? The minister has his Sunday sermons, his annual addresses before certain societies, his weekly association. In the old time, such things were done, yet not the other left undone. Now the lonely boy or orphan girl must seek out the minister,--and how likely this is to happen everybody knows; the mother must tell over the story of her widowhood, pained to see how "in course" it falls upon that wearied ear; the spinster must tell again how the boat floated empty and bottom upward to shore long years ago, and so no one was "spared to keep all right;" and the wild lad--alas! how many such do the clergy save now? As I see such things,--and I do see them often,--as I realize that change in men and times, in manners and books, from which this change is inseparable,--I confess I see a new[27] sphere opening for women. It takes no remarkable gifts, in the common sense of those words; only a kindly heart, a thoughtful head, a tender, reverent care-taking, wholly apart from meddlesomeness. Not many are the ministers now who will pause to explain to Martha that she is careful and troubled about many things; and that really the visionary Mary, with her dreamy eyes, is choosing the good part. Not many can see Nathanael standing under the fig-tree, and remind him of it at the needful moment. But if, in every religious household, there were a deaconess, called by nature and God to her work,--one to whom the young felt a right to go with questions home could not answer; one pledged to secret counsel, with whom the restless and unhappy might confer,--it seems to me the wheels of life would move more smoothly.[28] How the unlikeliest persons are sometimes raised up to such a ministry, let the following story tell. In the dim and dreary precincts of the Seven Dials in London, years ago, two orphan girls were left lying on door-steps, fed by chance charity, to grow up as they might. One died; and the other was finally adopted by an old man, an atheist, who had been neighbor to her parents. She grew up an atheist also, and married,--saved by God's mercy from what had seemed her likeliest fate. Stepping into the passage of the Bloomsbury Mission Hall to shelter herself from the rain, one night, a shaft, winged by the Holy Spirit, struck to her empty heart. The next week, a lending library was to be opened in the district. Marian was first at the door. "Sir," said she, "will you lend me a Bible?"--"A Bible!" exclaimed the man. "We did not mean to _lend_ Bibles; but I will get you one."