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 the
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.
Besides the advantages of a permanent home, under careful supervision,
to which the probationers and deaconesses have access, in such a home
care is taken to train the deaconesses in the doctrines of the Church,
and there is an atmosphere favorable to the virtues of faith and
devotion that the work demands. The deaconesses are never allowed to
forget that they serve in a threefold capacity: "Servants of the Lord
Jesus; servants of the sick and poor, 'for Jesus' sake;' servants one to
another." The motto of the indomitable little republic of Switzerland,
"All for each and each for all," might well be accepted as that
characteristically belonging to them.
Then, too, there is a tradition of service in such a home. One deaconess
learns from another. The physician is at hand to give his suggestions
and medical instruction, and the lectures on Church history, on the
history of missions, and on methods of evangelization make the home a
center of information on all questions that affect the usefulness of the
office. There is no other one place in which to obtain the practical and
theoretical instruction that is needed for the education of a deaconess
well equipped for her work.
Furthermore, the deaconess home offers a wide and varied field for those
possessing different gifts. None can be so highly educated and
cultivated that places cannot be found to utilize their talents to good
advantage; while those who are sadly lacking in the education of the
schools can, by talent, untiring industry, and energy make up for
defects in early training.
The field of work of the deaconess in modern times is a large one. It
would be easier to define what it is not than what it is. In orphanages,
in asylums for fallen women, in women's prisons, in reform schools, in
Sunday-schools, infant schools, and higher schools, in classes among
working-girls and servants, in industrial homes, in asylums for the
blind and deaf and dumb, in hospitals of various kinds, and in churches,
working under the direction of the pastor--in all of these relations and
many others we find deaconesses in Germany, France, England, and other
European countries.
The service in hospitals seems especially incumbent upon Christian
women, and in the early history of these institutions we find
deaconesses mentioned in connection with them.
Before the birth of Christ hospitals were unknown. It is true that in
Rome and Athens a certain provision was made for the poor, and largesses
were given them from time to time. But this was done from motives of
political expediency, and not from sympathy or commiseration with their
ills. But as soon as the early Christians were free to practice their
religion openly, hospitals arose in all the great cities. In the latter
half of the fourth century the distinguished Christian teacher, Ephrem
the Syrian, in Edessa, placed rows of beds for the sick and starving.
His contemporary, Basil, the great bishop of Cæsarea, founded a number
of institutions for strangers, the poor, and the sick, caring especially
for the lepers.[90] Little houses were built closely together, but so
that the patients could be separated one from another, and cared for
separately. Even at that early date the hospitals were arranged into
divisions for either sex, as they are at the present time. To use a
modern phrase, the wards of the men patients were placed under the
charge of a deacon while the deaconesses ministered to the sick of their
own sex, according as their services were required. "It was a rule for
the deacons and deaconesses to seek for the unfortunate day by day, and
to inform the bishops, who in turn, accompanied by a priest, visited
the sick and needy of all classes."[91]
In the Middle Ages there were orders of Hospitallers, consisting of
laymen, monks, and knights, who devoted themselves entirely to the care
of the sick. Under their influence great and splendid hospitals were
built, of which the old Hôtel Dieu in Paris was a conspicuous example.
The Hospital of the Holy Ghost in Rome, and the service of the same
order, originated like hospitals all over Europe. In late years, with
the development of medical and surgical art, hospital arrangements have
arrived at a degree of perfection never before known; and the care of
the sick, as it has been studied and practiced by Protestant deaconesses
and Catholic Sisters of Mercy, has also greatly improved.
The state to which the hospitals had degenerated in Fliedner's time, and
the need of experienced nurses who should be actuated by the highest
Christian motives, were among the strong reasons he advanced for
providing the Church with deaconesses as helpers. Here are his
words:[92] "The poor sick people lay heavily on my mind. How often had
I seen them neglected, their bodily wants miserably provided for, their
spiritual needs quite forgotten, withering away in their often unhealthy
rooms like leaves in autumn; for how many cities, even those having
large populations, were without hospitals! And I have seen many on my
travels in Holland, Brabant, England, and Scotland, as in our own
Germany; I often found the portals of glittering marble, but the nursing
and care were wretched. Physicians complained bitterly of the
drunkenness and immorality of the attendants, and what shall I say of
the spiritual care? In many hospitals preachers we're no longer found;
hospital chaplains yet more seldom. In the pious olden time these men
were always in such institutions, especially in the Netherlands, where
evangelical hospitals bore the beautiful name of "God's house," because
it was recognized that God especially visits the inmates of such houses,
to draw them to himself. Do not such wrongs cry to heaven? Is not our
Lord's reproachful word addressed to us, 'I was sick and in prison and
ye visited me not?' And shall not our Christian women be capable and
willing to undertake the care of the sick for Christ's sake?" It was by
such words, and similar ones, as in his famous appeal "Freiwillige vor"
(Volunteers to the front!) which he sent out from Wurtemberg to Basel
in 1842, that he aroused the Christian women of Germany to give
themselves to this service. By their aid he instituted a system of
nursing that has changed the aspect of every hospital ward in Germany;
and, through the training that Florence Nightingale enjoyed at
Kaiserswerth, the reform that was there instituted passed to England,
and has effected a transformation in the entire hospital system of
England.
In Germany deaconesses are often trained to special duties that are
required in hospitals for certain diseases or certain classes of
patients, and they are becoming so skillful in their duties that the
present system of hospital nursing could not be continued without their
aid.
The nursing care of deaconesses in insane asylums is especially
valuable. The large and well-ordered Insane Asylum for Female Patients
in Kaiserswerth, with its long lists of cases soundly cured, shows how
healthful and important is the quiet, constant influence of intelligent
Christian attendance upon those who are mentally unsound.
The usefulness of deaconesses as care-takers in all kinds of hospitals
and homes for the aged, and asylums of every description, is so apparent
that it does not need to be dwelt upon. The _crèche_, or day home,
where infants and young children can be sheltered and watched during the
day while their mothers are at work, is an institution that started in
Paris in 1834, through the efforts of M. Marbeau, one of the mayors of a
district of the city. This is now incorporated into the government
system of Paris, and the idea has spread to neighboring lands, so that
such homes are found in many of the cities in South Germany and
Switzerland. It is true that there are no nurses that can care for
children as the true mother, but where mothers have to be absent from
morning until night engaged at hard work, and the little ones are left
neglected at home, or in the care of other children who are themselves
young enough to need very nearly the same attention that is bestowed on
the infants; or where the mothers are such in name, but in reality are
failing in every quality which we attach to that sacred office; or where
the foundling hospital is the only alternative to which the real mother,
confronted by the necessity of earning bread for herself and child, can
turn--in such cases the _crèche_ is a real benefaction whose existence
has enabled families to keep together, and children to be given a chance
in life who otherwise would have had small prospect of keeping soul and
body together.
There is another institution, called the waiting-school, where children
from two to four years of age are received, whose parents both go daily
to work, and who would be left to wander about the streets unless this
place of refuge were opened to them. The _crèche_, or day home, seeks
only to watch over the infants who are put in its care, or to amuse them
and keep them contented; the waiting-school goes further, and tries to
give the little ones some ideas of discipline and the elementary
beginnings of instruction. Fliedner, who was a lover of children, took
great interest in both these institutions, and in his school for
infant-school teachers prepared deaconesses especially for the duties
that are required in teachers of this class. The motherly heart, the
gift of story-telling and singing, a pleasant and unruffled demeanor,
the quiet but firm inculcation of order and obedience--these and other
qualities Fliedner sought to develop in instructors for these schools.
The day homes have already been introduced into many places in the
United States, and often cover the field of both the _crèche_ and
waiting-school, but there is a wide opportunity for the extension of
their usefulness; and whether in the future, when the demands upon
Christian deaconesses shall be much more multiplex than they are now, it
may be necessary to provide special training for Christian teachers in
America for such special work, time alone can decide. The question of
Christian education is one that has not yet been determined in its full
extent. In the year 1800 Mother Barat, of the Catholic Church, founded
the order of Sisters of the Sacred Heart, which is especially devoted to
the education of daughters belonging to the higher social ranks. At her
death it numbered three thousand five hundred members, and had over
seventy establishments, which are located in every civilized land. It
cannot be maintained that the education given in these schools is either
extensive or profound, but the influence of the order upon the women
whom it has reached has been both. Fliedner, at Kaiserswerth, went as
far as his age and environments would permit him to go. He provided
schools where teachers were prepared as instructors for all grades of
schools, from the most elementary up to the girls' high-schools; and no
other institution in Germany, with one or two exceptions, such as the
Victoria Institute at Berlin, yet offers positions to women teachers of
a higher grade than is afforded by these schools. But in other lands,
where the educational facilities for women are far beyond those that
Germany can offer at the present time, positions of higher importance
and wider influence are held by women; and it is an important question
for the future what class of women shall fill these places. If Fliedner
had had to meet the problem we can imagine he would have done so with
the boldness and energy that he showed in solving those that his times
and circumstances afforded him. He would, doubtless, have enlisted among
his deaconesses those whose talents gave him reason to provide them with
the widest training the schools can offer; and then he would have
endeavored to place them where they could do the most effective service
for Christ and his Church. It may be that in the future which opens
before the women of the Methodist Episcopal Church of America there will
be just such questions seeking and finding solution.
Doubtless at the present time the deaconess who will answer to the
greatest number of immediate wants is the "parish-deaconess," or the
home mission deaconess, as we may call her. Her usefulness has been well
tested in the great cities of Germany, France, and England, as we have
seen. Perhaps nowhere is her work better appreciated than in London, the
greatest city of modern times. The tendency of this age of manufactures
and commerce is to attract laborers and workers from country homes,
where work has become less open to them through the increased use of
agricultural machines of all kinds, into cities, where factories,
shops, counting-rooms, and offices constantly afford openings. London
has felt the full force of this movement. In 1836 her population was
about equal to that of New York, including Brooklyn and Jersey City. Now
the great city contains 5,500,000 inhabitants. It is growing at the rate
of over 100,000 a year, nor is there any influence at work to stop its
growth. The same causes that produce it are constantly at work. The
great massing of the population together, with the unequaled increase in
the wealth of the people, make the contrast of riches and poverty
striking and obvious. The west of London, with its vast wealth, its
homes of refinement and elegance, and its appliances for the enjoyment
of art, science, and literature, is separated from the poverty, the
degradation, the misery, and the sorrow of the East End by a gulf as
great as that which separated Lazarus from Dives. It is difficult for
those who are at ease, whose lives, to use Wordsworth's felicitous
phrase, are made up "of cheerful yesterdays and confident
to-morrows"--it is difficult for such even faintly to apprehend the
dullness, the drudgery, and the hardships of those who, even at the best
estate, are obliged to live in such surroundings. The vast metropolis a
few years ago was for a short time shaken out of its lethargy by a
voice that would be heard, when _The Bitter Cry of Outcast London_ was
published. "Few who will read these pages have any conception of what
these pestilential human rookeries are, where tens of thousands are
crowded together amid horrors which call to mind what we have heard of
the middle passage of the slave-ship. To go into them you have to
penetrate courts reeking with poisonous malodorous gases arising from
accumulations of sewerage, refuse scattered in all directions, and often
flowing beneath your feet; courts, many of them, which the sun never
penetrates, which are never visited by a breath of fresh air. You have
to ascend rotten stair-cases, grope your way along dark and filthy
passages swarming with vermin. Then, if you are not driven back by the
intolerable stench, you may gain admittance into the dens in which these
thousands of beings herd together. Eight feet square! That is about the
average size of many of these rooms.... Where there are beds they are
simply heaps of dirty rags, shavings, or straw, but for the most part
the miserable beings find rest only upon the filthy boards.... There are
men and women who lie and die day by day in their wretched single room,
sharing all the family trouble, enduring the hunger and the cold,
without hope, without a single ray of comfort, until God curtains their
staring eyes with the merciful film of death."[93]
Such are the places where the deaconesses of East London go in and out
from morn to eve, like angels of mercy, succoring the miserable and
unhappy, often rebuking vice, and encouraging with friendly words those
who are worn and discouraged in the battle of life. Here they nurse the
sick, hold mothers' meetings, start evening classes for working young
men, and gather the children of all ages in every kind of class that can
interest and instruct them. They are always ready to provide for
individual cases that they meet. If they find a friendless young
servant-girl who is out of work, they send her to the servants' home,
where, for very little payment, sometimes nothing at all, she can be
taken care of long enough to give her fresh courage and strength. Then
she is aided in seeking a situation, and so she is saved from the
innumerable temptations to vice and misery that are sure to assail her
if she stands alone.
Many of these deaconesses are educated women, gladly devoting their
whole life and energies to the work, and who with "food and raiment" are
quite content. Nothing but a strong indomitable faith in God's love and
promises can stand the strain of such work. But if there is the faith
and love to deny self and dare all "for the love of Christ and in His
name," where can such rewards for labor be found? The dull streets
become filled with friends, sodden countenances brighten, the little
children come with loving faces and gladdened hearts, and the deaconess
is recognized as interpreting to the hearts of these weary, forlorn,
helpless people the love of God who, when He came upon earth, shared the
burdens that belonged to His humanity. He came as a Man of Sorrows and
acquainted with grief, and it was the "common people" that heard Him
gladly. The deaconess, in her distinctive dress, is becoming a
well-known figure in the east of London, and not only protected but
recommended by her garb, she visits the lowest parts of the city without
danger. Just such deaconesses are needed in the cities of America. The
cities of the United States are increasing as wonderfully as the great
cities of the Old World. With the surplus population of Europe pouring
in upon us by the hundreds of thousands annually our country is doubling
in numbers every twenty-five years; and the growth of the towns absorbs
a larger proportion of this multitude than does the country. The cities
attract the immigrants because there they find others of their own
nationality. In some cities there are whole foreign colonies where the
people speak a foreign tongue, read foreign newspapers, and have very
few interests in common with the people of the land in which they live.
They continue the same customs and the same habits of thought that
belonged to them in the Old World. Examples of such colonies are found
in the thirty thousand Poles in Buffalo, and the sixty thousand
Bohemians in Chicago.
Then the cities offer attractions that are irresistible to the young men
and women from the country. Thousands leave quiet country homes every
year, and, with no certain prospects before them, cast themselves into
the busy life of the nearest great metropolis. In many places,
especially in New England, the villages number less, and farm land is
much less valuable than it was fifty years ago. It is this massing of
population that is causing us already to experience some of the evils
that are old problems in the great cities of Europe. There is the same
gulf between the rich and the poor, with the added element that the
great mass of the poor are composed of foreigners and their children.
And the difference in race is a hinderance to a common ground of
sympathy. A greater hinderance is the difference in religious faith. The
preponderating number of native Americans are Protestants, and their
thoughts and beliefs are permeated with the principles that their
fathers held so dear, and which they sacrificed home and country to
preserve. They hold a faith that is inseparably connected with free
institutions, personal liberty, and personal responsibility. But the
mass of foreigners that are in the great cities largely belong to the
working-class, and, with the large proportion of the poor who are the
wards of the city, are Roman Catholic in faith, a faith that has little
in sympathy with republican institutions, and which least prepares its
followers to exercise the duties of citizens of a republic. Keeping
these facts in mind, the statistics contained in the following extracts
are of telling force: "If the laboring class should contribute its due
proportion to the congregations, the churches, many of which are now
half empty, would not begin to hold the people. In 1880 there was in the
United States one evangelical organization to every 516 of the
population; in Boston, _counting churches of all kinds_, there was but
one to every 1,600 of the population; in Chicago, one to every 2,081; in
New York, one to every 2,468; in St. Louis, one to every 2,800." "The
worst of it is that, instead of improving, the condition of things has
been growing worse every year. While the prosperous classes are moving
away to the suburbs, and the laborers are being more densely massed
together in the heart of the city, the church accommodations, even if
fully used, are becoming more inadequate to the needs of the community.
Including religious organizations of all sorts, New York had in 1830 one
place of worship for every 1,853 of its inhabitants; in 1840, one for
every 1,840; in 1850, one for every 2,095; in 1860, one for every 2,344;
in 1870, one for every 2,004; in 1880, one for every 2,468; and the
religious history of Chicago is even more noteworthy in this respect:
Chicago had in 1840 one church for every 747 of its population; in 1851
there was one for every 1,009; in 1862, one for every 1,301; in 1870,
one for 1,593; in 1880, one for 2,081; in 1885, one for 2,254. All the
large cities have districts which are destitute of church
accommodations, and have not seats in Sunday-school for more than one
tenth of their children."[94]
Have we not as great need of deaconesses as any of the cities of the Old
World? Most of our pastors stand alone. They do not have the assistant
curates and pastors that are connected with large city churches in
Berlin and London. When the minister makes pastoral calls, and, entering
working-men's homes, finds sickness and scanty resources, he has no
deaconess to call to his aid with her cheerful words of encouragement
and her loving sympathy, that are better than money and medicine. It is
not charity alone that is wanted in such cases; it is the knowledge of
how to use proper means to make the sick one comfortable, how to lessen
the burden on the family that a small additional call for work and care
has so sadly taxed; how to enlighten the ignorance that is so common
without wounding the susceptibilities that are so human. For, to quote
the words of the Christ in the _Vision of Sir Launfal_:
"Not what we give, but what we share,
For the gift without the giver is bare;
Who gives himself with his alms feeds three:--
Himself, his hungry neighbor, and Me."
It is for such ministrations that we need deaconesses in every
evangelical church of the United States; may the women that are ready to
"publish the tidings" be "a great host."
[90] _Der Diakonissenberuf nach seiner Vergangenheit und Gegenwart._
Emil Wacker, Gütersloh, 1888, p. 196.
[91] McClintock and Strong's _Cyclopedia_, vol. iv, art. "Hospitals."
The editors give as authority for this statement, Augustine, _De
Civit. Dei_, i, xxii, c. 8.
[92] Theodor Fliedner, _Kurzer Abriss seines Lebens_. Kaiserswerth,
1886, p. 60.
[93] _The Bitter Cry of Outcast London_, pp. 3-10.
[94] _Modern Cities_, by S. L. Loomis, New York, 1887, pp. 88, 89.