[6] Ibid., p. 181.
[7] Constitution and Rules for the Order of Deaconesses of Alabama, Art. vi.
[8] Church Work, May, 1888.
[9] For this and other suggestions regarding the deaconess question in the Presbyterian Church, I am greatly indebted to the kindness of Dr. Hastings, President of the Union Theological Seminary.
[10] Presbyterian Review, April, 1889, art. “Presbyterian Deaconesses.”
[11] Mrs. Meyer’s book on Deaconesses, containing also the story of the Chicago Training-school and Deaconess Home, gives the best description to be obtained of the rise of the work in Chicago.
[12] A more extended and elaborate course of study has been prepared by the Rev. Alfred A. Wright, D.D., Cambridge, Mass.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE MEANS OF TRAINING AND THE FIELD OF WORK FOR DEACONESSES IN AMERICA.
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.