Anabaptists, and the
Moravians. It was among the Mennonites in Holland that Fliedner saw the
deaconesses, who so interested him in their duties that he obtained the
convictions which in the end led him to devote his life to their
restoration in the economy of the Church. Among the Moravians,
deaconesses were introduced at the instance of Count Zinzendorf in 1745,
but only as a limited form of woman's service, by no means measuring up
to the place accorded them to day in Germany.

We have now reached the nineteenth century, and from the early Church to
the present time we find successive if sporadic attempts to incorporate
into the Church the active diaconate of women. These constantly
recurring efforts imply a consciousness, deep, if unexpressed, of the
need to utilize better the especial gifts of women in Christian service.
We have reached the moment when this consciousness is to take a suitable
and enduring form; when the Church machinery, long defective in this
particular, is to be re-adjusted and made complete.

[18] _Die Weibliche Diakonie_, vol. i, p. 67.
[19] _Woman's Work in the Church_, Ludlow, p. 117, note. "Matthew
Paris mentions it as one of the wonders of the age, for the
year 1250, that in Germany there rose up an innumerable multitude
of those continent women who wish to be called Beguines, to that
extent that Cologne was inhabited by more than a thousand of
them."
[20] _Die Weibliche Diakonie_, Schaefer, vol. i, p. 70.
[21] _Der Diakonissenberuf_ E. Wacker, p. 82.
[22] _Denkschrift zur Jubelfeier_, J. Disselhoff, p. 5. Guetersloh,
1888.
[23] _Die Weibliche Diakonie_, vol. i, p. 73.
[24] _Histoire de la principaute de Sedan_, Pasteur Pegran, vol. ii,
chaps. i, ii.

CHAPTER IV.

FLIEDNER, THE RESTORER OF THE OFFICE OF
DEACONESS.

The first years of the present century were sad years for Germany. There
was a life-and-death struggle with an all-powerful conqueror to preserve
existence as a nation. The Germans still call this "the war for
freedom." Immediately thereafter followed a period of religious
awakening, and this proved to be the hour when the diaconate of woman
rose again to life and power. When the fullness of time arrives for a
cause or a movement to take its place among the forces of society, many
hearts become impressed with its importance. So, between the years 1820
and 1835, there were four several attempts to awa