The establishment of the Diaconate, in which, as an order of the clergy, women administered the sacraments, interpreted and promulgated doctrines, in connection with the practical work of charity and benevolence, are matters of history. In its periods of persecution, the church received no more devoted service than that given by its consecrated women. For its sake, they cheerfully accepted martyrdom, in its most cruel forms. Princesses of the blood and other women of noble birth left the allurements of courts for the studious seclusion of the cloister, or, seeking out the poor and needy, they divided with them their substance. No conditions of miserable poverty or loathsome disease hindered the most tender devotion. In all ages and in all lands women have given proof of a loyalty to Christianity as sincere as it was serviceable. By their proselyting power in converting royal relatives, they were the means of bringing not only Rome but France, England, Spain, Hungary, Poland, and Russia under Christian rule.[160] Is the church to-day less in need of such service than in the past, that it will seek in any way to circumscribe the work of its faithful women by denying to them such sanction, through its prescribed forms, as it bestows freely upon like qualified men, is the question which presses itself persistently forward for settlement. Certain it is that, as ecclesiastical despotism loses its hold upon the people, they will more readily seek spiritual guidance under a broader law of adaptation and natural fitness, in which women must stand at least an equal chance with men. What the world has already lost by their exclusion from a controlling influence in the church, finds its most painful illustration in the widespread and deep depravity of the masses in our great cities, which the church, in none of its branches, has materially lessened. From the efforts now being made in America for the restoration of the Diaconate of woman, it is safe to argue a change for the better in this respect. The new departure in methods has also an important illustration in the city of Chicago, where, under the leadership of D. L. Moody, gifts amounting to $250,000 have been secured for a theological school and home, to be conducted under the auspices of the Chicago Evangelical Society, which is to be open to both sexes upon the same terms. Its object is the evangelization of the unchurched masses of that great city.