uncandid and unphilosophical to pass over. There are certain highstrung souls, of whose undivided and entire love to God there can be no doubt, whose intense personal devotion to our Lord is the warmest, and who realize His Passion in a measure into which our cold hearts cannot enter, to whom this devotion is congenial. In them it exists in entire subordination to the feelings which the incommunicable right of God to our entire selves engenders and cultivates. We may not be able to understand them, but such there are. There must, therefore, be some aspect of this practice which appeals to a very high part of our nature, and therefore well deserves our careful consideration' (pp. 379-82).

And, at the end of the long and careful examination of the evidence, in the preparation of which he had the invaluable help of Dr. Pusey,' Bishop Forbes concluded:

In principle, then, there is no question, herein, between us and any other portion of the Catholic Church. Even where the incommunicable attributes of God have, in expression at least, been invaded, the real underlying belief has been explained to be that nothing is obtained for man, no grace, no aid, no gift for body, soul, or spirit, except through or from the One Mediator between God and man, our adorable Lord, Christ Jesus. Prayer to the saints in heaven is explained, again and again, to be the same in kind as the prayers to the saints on earth' (p. 422).

We have written on this subject because of our conviction that a serious examination of it is a need in the Church of England at the present time. Side by side with thoughtful and guarded prayers for the intercessions of the saints there has grown up of late years much that is undesirable and harmful. Devotions are used among ourselves which are not less extravagant than some in use among Roman Catholics. There are those who are cultivating a religious temper which makes it natural that in the hour of death they should commit themselves to the protection of the saints rather than to the mercy of Almighty God.

In view of the present needs of the English Church much which has recently been said or written about the invocation of saints is unsatisfying. It is impossible that the matter should be settled in the off-hand manner in which it has been treated by Canon Gore. The rash statements sometimes

1 Liddon, Life of Edward Bouverie Pusey, iv. 146: Pusey revised the Bishop's work throughout, correcting it minutely, besides himself writing the explanation of some of the Articles. He supplied almost the whole of the passages which, under the head of Article XXII., deal with the subject of purgatory and the invocation of saints.'

2 See Guardian, November 2, 1898, p. 1699, and November 16,

p. 1793.

heard in sermons or read in newspapers, and made in defiance of history and Catholic theology, that the invocation of saints, as necessarily involved in the doctrine of the Communion of Saints, is an essential part of the Christian system, are simply mischievous. Nor are indiscriminating assertions of the unlawfulness of the practice, even when they come from episcopal thrones, likely to be profitable. Sweeping condemnations which ignore real differences will convince nobody. Abuses are not met by failing to recognize a lawful use.

The Church Quarterly Review has inherited from the Tractarian leaders the habit of looking to the Bishops for help and guidance. And we venture, under the present circumstances, very humbly but very earnestly, to suggest that if the Bishops are to be listened to by those who need to learn caution and restraint, they must really face the facts of history, whether of the early undivided Church or of the Church in England. Both the clergy and the educated laity know perfectly well that the liturgies contain prayers to God for the intercessions of the saints, that great Fathers taught and practised invocation of saints in the ordinary sense of the words, and that a reasonable interpretation of the English Articles of Religion does not force them into condemning what thus has weighty sanction. To ignore these facts, or any one of them, is simply to destroy beforehand the effect of cautions which might else be fruitfully given.

We wish there may be found increasingly in our rulers at the present time the balanced judgment which characterized Bishop William Forbes of Edinburgh, who, at the end of the section on the invocation of saints in his Considerationes modeste et pacifica, wrote:

'Let God alone be religiously adored: let Him alone be prayed to, through Christ, Who is the only and sole Mediator, truly and properly speaking, between God and man. Let not the very ancient custom received in the universal Church, as well Greek as Latin, of addressing the angels and saints after the manner we have mentioned be condemned or rejected as impious, nor even as vain and foolish, by the more rigid Protestants. Let the foul abuses and superstitions which have crept in be taken away. And so peace may thereafter easily be established and sanctioned between the dissentient parties, as regards this controversy, which may the God of peace and of all pious concord vouchsafe to grant for the sake of His only-begotten Son' (ii. 312-13).

ART. II.-ON THE EARLY HISTORY AND

MODERN REVIVAL OF DEACONESSES.

1. The Ministry of Deaconesses. By Deaconess CECILIA ROBINSON. With an Introduction by RANDALL T. DAVIDSON, D.D., Lord Bishop of Winchester, and an Appendix by J. ARMITAGE ROBINSON, D.D., Norrisian Professor of Divinity. (London, 1898.)

2. Herzog-Hauck's Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche. Vierter Band. Artt. 'Diakonen- und Diakonissenhäuser,' by THEODOR SCHÄFER, and 'Diakonissin,' by HANS ACHELIS. (Leipzig, 1898).

3. De diaconis et diaconissis veteris ecclesiæ liber commentarius. By CASPAR ZIEGLER. (Wittebergæ, 1678.)

4. Dissertatio de diaconissis primitivæ ecclesiæ. By Joн. PHIL. ODELEM. (Lipsiæ, 1700.)

5. Acta Sanctorum Bollandi, &c. September, Vol. I. 'Tractatus præliminaris de ecclesiæ diaconissis.' By Jo. PINIUS. (Parisiis et Romæ, 1868.)

6. De diaconissis. Commentatio archæologica. By A. J. C. PANKOWSKI, Penitentiary and Preacher in Passau Cathedral. (Ratisbonæ, 1866.)

7. Deaconesses; or the official help of women in parochial work and in charitable institutions. By J. S. HowsON, D.D. (London, 1862; reprinted, with additions, from the Quarterly Review for September 1860.)

8. Women's Work in the Church. By J. M. LUDLOW. (London, 1865.)

9. The Diaconate of Women in the Anglican Church. Five chapters on the present attitude [sic] of the question. By Dean HowSON. (London, 1886.)

It is a very common thing, as Archbishop Trench long ago pointed out, for words to suffer a certain deterioration and degeneration' in meaning. This has unquestionably been the case with the word deaconess. It originally denoted a distinct order in the ministry of the Church, having a wellmarked status (although it may have varied somewhat in different places) and duties more or less clearly defined. In modern days it has come to be used far more loosely, and in fact may now denote anything or nothing.

This is to be accounted for by two distinct causes. In

On the Study of Words, p. 77 (eighteenth edition, 1882).

the first place, although an attempt has been made to revive it at the present day (and indeed many would say that it is now in existence), the ancient ecclesiastical office of deaconess has been practically non-existent since the early middle ages. Consequently there has been nothing to keep the accurate meaning of the word before people's eyes. And in the second place, the office of Deaconess, like the parallel office of Deacon, has at all times found favour with bodies out of communion with the Church. Although, of course, these have given it a lax meaning and a status which is all their own, they have continually adopted it and used it partly, no doubt, in not unnatural protest against the gradual disuse of the office within the Church, partly, perhaps, owing to the fact that, having less to imperil, these bodies have always been less careful in controlling and circumscribing women's work than the Church has.

We propose therefore in the first place to make an inquiry as to the nature and history of the ancient office itself, and then to examine in detail the attempts which have been made in modern days to revive and utilise it.

Something must be said, to begin with, as to the existing books on the subject. They are rather numerous, as will be seen from the list at the head of this article. Some of them, however, are exceedingly scarce. Ziegler's classical dissertation, for instance, only the last chapter of which is devoted to the deaconess, is to be found neither in the British Museum nor in the Cambridge University Library. The same is the case with Odelem,2 whilst there appears to be no copy of Pankowski in the Bodleian. Again, although much valuable work was done by the older writers, Ziegler and Odelem and Pinius, in the way of collecting material, they cannot be said to have used it very discriminatingly; whilst some of the later writers have written too much as advocates to be in a good position for investigating the facts. Dean Howson, for example, claimed to have collected instances of the early establishment of a female diaconate in the Church 'from various places visited by Christ's Apostle, from Corinth, from

1 The history of the deaconess has also been treated in its place, and with their wonted learning, by Morinus, Bingham, Assemani, Suicer &c., and in the following works, which the present writer has only glanced at: Schäfer's Die weibliche Diakonie, and some papers by A. W. Dieckhoff, entitled 'Die Diakonissen der alten Kirche,' in the Monatsschrift für Diakonie und innere Mission for 1877.

2 The Bodleian Library possesses three copies of the former and two of the latter.

Ephesus, from Philippi, from Rome,'' a feat which he accomplished by including every reference that he could find in St. Paul's Epistles to the work of women. Still, it must not be forgotten that Dr. Howson, by his useful essay and his speeches on the subject, did more than anyone else to make the subject known in the English Church. Dr. Ludlow, that indefatigable friend of all good causes, had written his essay years before Dr. Howson's Deaconesses was published, but was unable to secure a hearing until the subject had thus been popularized; and yet Women's Work in the Church is the better book by far, and its seventh section remains to this day the best statement of the position of the deaconess before the Roman law, as in the fullest sense a member of the clerical body.

2

But the whole subject is not free from difficulty. The word diaconissa itself, for example, sometimes means the wife of a deacon, just as presbytera is used to denote the wife of a presbyter, and episcopissa for the wife of a bishop.3 But far more confusing than this is the fact that later writers have classed the Deaconess with the Widows and Virgins, and assumed in consequence that whatever is said of the widow may be applied to the deaconess, and vice versa. This confusion is made, more or less generally, by most of the writers who have dealt with the subject. It is made even in the learned article by Dr. Hans Achelis, which was published in the early months of this year; and it is only in Deaconess Cecilia Robinson's interesting book, the historical chapters of which are largely due to the scholarly care of her brother, Professor Armitage Robinson, that we have for the first time a succinct and accurate account of the office of the deaconess in early days. No doubt, the book has its faults: the evidence is not always presented as clearly as it might be, and a

5

1 Diaconate of Women, &c., p. 21. The chief interest of this little volume is to be found in the singularly discordant answers, by wellknown scholars, to a series of questions on the subject drawn up by a committee of which Dr. Howson was chairman (pp. 59 sqq.).

2 Women's Work in the Church, p. viii sq.

3 See Du Cange, s.v.; and for presbytera S. Greg. Dial. lib. iv. c. 11 (Migne, P. L. lxxvii. 335).

Ludlow and Pankowski, it should be said, are free from this confusion, although even they adduce passages which do not really refer to the deaconess at all (e.g. the former quotes Tert. Ad Uxor. i. 7, and the latter Tert. De Virg. vel. 9).

It is to be regretted that the typography of this article, and indeed of many other parts of the new Herzog, is not equal to its learning. Misprints abound, and unfortunately they are especially common in references.

6 Op. cit. pp. xvii-xviii.