Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 7.djvu/11



DEACON (διάκονος, minister, servant), the name given to the lowest order of minister in the Christian church. From the appointment of the seven Hellenic deacons (Acts vi.) we learn that their duty under the apostles was simply to distribute alms from the public fund. In the early church, however, they soon came to discharge higher functions. They assisted the bishop and presbyter in the service of the sanctuary ; in the administration of the Eucharist they handed the elements to the people ; they instructed the catechumens, and in some cases baptized ; and the archdeacons came to exercise in the 6th century the judicial power of the bishop over the inferior clergy. In the Church of England the form of ordaining deacons declares that it is their office to assist the priest in the dis tribution of the holy communion; in which, agreeably to the practice of the ancient church, they are confined to the administering of the wine to the communicants. A deacon in England is not capable of holding any benefice, yet he may officiate as a private chaplain, as curate to a beneficed clergyman, or as lecturer in a parish church. He may be ordained at twenty-three years of age, anno currente ; but it is expressly provided that the bishop shall not ordain the same person a priest and deacon on the same day. In Presbyterian churches, as in apostolic times, the deacons have charge only of the pecuniary affairs of the congregation. In the Human Catholic Church it is the deacon s office to incense the officiating priest or prelate ; to lay the corporal on the altar ; to receive the paten or cup from the sub- deacon, and present it to the person officiating ; to incense the choir ; to receive the pix from the officiating prelate, and to carry it to the subdeacou ; and at a pontifical mass, when the archbishop gives the blessing, to put the mitre on his head, and to take off the archiepiscopal pall and lay it on the altar.

Deaconess.—This was the title of a ministry to which women were appointed in the early church, whose duty it was to perform certain functions towards female catechumens during the ceremony of baptism by immersion, which could not so well be performed by the deacons. Their age was at first fixed at sixty years, but it was after wards reduced to forty years, and no married woman was eligible to the office. Abuses gradually became prevalent amongst the deaconesses, which led to the suppression of their ministry in the Latin church in the 6th century. The office was abolished in the Greek church in the 12th century.

 DEAD SEA, the largest in Palestine, and physically, as well as historically, among the most remarkable in the world. It is called in Scripture The Salt Sea (Gen. xiv. 3), The Sea of the Plain, or more correctly of the Arabah (Deut. iii. 17), and The East Sea (Ezek. xlvii. 18). Josephus calls it the Asphaltic Lake (B. J. iii. 10, 17), a name adopted by classic writers in allusion to the bitumen, or asphaltum, which abounds in its basin. Jerome gave it the name Dead Sea because its waters are fatal to animal life, and in the Talmud it is called the Sea of Sodom. Its common name among the inhabitants of Palestine is Baheiret Lut, &quot; The Sea of Lot.&quot; The sea is 46 miles long, and varies from 5 to 9 in breadth. Its bed is the lowest part of the great valley of the Jordan ; and its surface has a depression of no less than 1308 feet beneath the level of the ocean. The Jordan valley itself, for a distance of about 80 miles to the north ward and 30 to the southward, is also below the level of the ocean. The general contour of the sea is an elongated oval, with a number of bold promontories and deep bays along the western shore, and a large, low peninsula on the south-east. It is shut in on the east and west by parallel ranges of mountains which rise steeply, and in some places in precipices of naked rock, from the water. The western range is the mountain chain of Judah, and is composed of white limestone intermixed with yellow and reddish strata. Its whole eastern slopes are bare, rugged, and desolate, forming that wilderness in which David found an asylum, in which the Baptist preached, and in which our Lord was tempted. The average height of the cliffs along the shore is about 2000 feet; but they are deeply fissured by torrent beds, which are all dry in summer. There are, however, a few fountains in the glens and near the shore, the most celebrated of which is the Biblical Engedi. At the north-west curve of the sea are extensive salt marshes, and at the south-west is a range of hills of rock salt, 7 miles long and 300 feet high, called Khashm Usdom, &quot;The ridge of Sodom.&quot; On the south of the sea lies a low marshy plain, partially covered with jungles of reeds, tamarisk, and broom. 