it for every feminine power, and scope for every feminine aspiration. "But is there to be no hallowed shrine within our walls?" some deep, religious heart may ask; "no solemn sanctuary wherein we alone may gather together to worship God?" Alas! even had we such a chapel, in this age of many religions, to which of them all should we confide it? or how could we make ourselves priestesses where the Lord himself made none, and his apostles absolutely forbade them? Let men alone bear the responsibility of further divisions in the Church of Christ. If they are so anxious about the forms and reforms of Christianity that they have altogether lost sight of its spirit, let us not fall into the same error.
Nevertheless, though I would not organize women's congregations, lest evils that we know not of should grow out of them, yet I would have such women as feel themselves called to it distinctly recognized by the Christian Church as trained and trusted and commissioned servants, to whom she committed, first, the educating of the young,—not weekly, as in the mere makeshift (so thoroughly do I know its deficiencies that I had almost said the mere humbug) of the modern Sunday school,—but daily, in the precepts and practice of religion; second, the ministering to the poor and the sick; third, and must difficult of all, the comforting of the afflicted and the troubled, and the reformation of the guilty; and these women, as I have before indicated, would hold rank among the most valued officers of all co-operative associations! I myself am an Episcopalian, and cannot wonder enough that, when deaconesses were an integral part of the organization of that pure primitive Church which the Anglican Communion and her American daughter pretend to take for their model, our clergy and bishops are so content to ignore the value of the patient and devoted labours of Christian women, and to withhold official recognition from them. I do not think it necessary, in order to be a deaconess, that a woman should come out and be separate from her home and kindred, any more than that a man should do so in order to be eligible to the priesthood
