Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 06.djvu/26

* DEACON. 14 DEAD. or more deacons are elctted by the members of each iliuifh to distribute the elements in the commuuiun, to act as the advisers of the pastor, and as the almoners of the L-harilies of the Church. The nature of the olfice is the same in the Presbyterian Church, where the deacons are elected by the congregation and ordained by the minister to assist the body known as the session of the churcli in the care of the poor, and in the general management of the secular affairs of the church. In the Lutheran churches of the United Stales, the deacon is a layman chosen to attend to the charities and temporalities of the congregation. Of recent years, there have been introduced into the statute law of a number of the States provisions by which deacons, by virtue of their ollice, become legal trustees of church property for the congregation, whether incorporated or unincorj)orated. Consult Seidl, Der Diacoiiat in dvr katholischen Kirche (Regensburg, 1884). DEACONESS. One of an order of women in the Christian churches. Traces of the order appear in Apostolic times (Rom. xvi. 1; I. Tim. V. 9 sqq.) and deaconesses were generally found in the early Christian communities. Their duties were in general to supi>lenient the work of the deacons and perform for members of their own sex such services as could with less pro- priety be performed by men. They assisted at the administration of baptism, acted as door- keepers on the woman's side of the congrega- tion, instructed the female catechtimens, took charge of the sick and poor women, and were present at the interviews of the clergj- with women. They were set apart for their work by laying on of hands and prayer by the bishop. In the earliest times, widows were generally chosen, and it was considered seemly that a dea- coness should be of mature years. In the West- ern Church decrees of councils abolishing the order are found as early as the fifth centiiry, and by the eighth it had entirely disappeared. In the East it lingered longer, but the duties be- came much restricted. The modern development of the institution in the various Protestant churches of Europe and America dates from the third decade of the nineteenth century. In IS30 Pastor Theodor Fliedner of the United Evan- gelical Church of Prussia founded a deaconesses' home at Kaiserswerth in Rhenish Prussia, which has served as a model for similar institutions in many parts of the world. The inmates of these houses devote themselves to charitalile work, but take no vows and are bound to no fixed term of sei"ice. Provision is generally made for their instruction and training, and they are luider the supervision of an ins])ector or superior. There are now many deaconesses' homes in Germany, and they are found in nearly all countries of Europe. In the Church of England nuich of the normal work of deaconesses is done by the various sisterhoods. In America an order of deaconesses was established in St. Andrew's Parish, Baltimore, of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in ISii."). A canon was adopted by the General Convention in 1880, regulating the order and ])roviding that members should have ade- quate preparation, both technical and religious, which should extend over a period of two years. Training school* meeting this reqiiirenient are now maintained in Xew York and Philadelphia. The General Conference of the Methodist Epis- copal Church in 1888 made provision for the establishment of the order of deaconesses. There are now many homes belonging to that Church in the United States, the value of which in 1895 amounted to more than .1)1)00,000. The Lutheran Church also has several homes, the lirsl having been organized in New Voik in 1852. The Pres- byterian Cieneral Assembly in 1891 sanctioned the order. Consult: Potter, tiisltrhoods and Deaconesses (Xew York, 1873) ; Kobinson, The Ministry of Deaconesses (London, 1898) ; The Church Quarterly Jleview, Xo. 94 (London, 1 899 ), pp. 302 sqq. See Sisterhooi).s. DEAD, liooK OF THE. The name given by Lepsius, and since generally applied, to the col- lection of magical and religious texts which, according to ancient Egyptian belief, formed a sort of guide and i)roteclion for the dead in their wanderings through the Lower World. It was placed in or near the colIin or in the armpits of the mummy. Hundreds of copies exist, some containing only a few chapters, while other rolls are over a hundred feet in length. Some of these copies are very elaborately written, and (espe- cially in later times) are ornamented with col- ored pictures. The Egyptians themselves called the collection the book of "coming forth in tho day-time' (piret em h{r)ou), from the opening words of the first chapter, which promise the soul of the deceased the power of visiting the Upper World. This title does as little justice to the varied contents of the collection as that erroneously pro])osed by De Rouge ( 'the fune- rary ritual'). This strange collection is not to be regarded as .a handbook of Egyptian tbeologj'; its character is chielly magical, although some hymns to the gods are incorporated in it. The individual chapters date from various periods, although most of them seem to have come down from the time of the pyramids; some, perhaps, even from the prehistoric age. A few formed part of the earliest collection of magical fune- rary texts inscribed on the walls inside the royal pyramids of the Sixth Dynasty: but the majority belong to a different corpus, which can be seen in process of gradial formation under the Twelfth Dynasty. At that time these texts were written on the sarcojihagi : under the Eigh- teenth DjTiasty the}' were written in papyri, although the selection and order of the chapters fluctuated. A fi.xed canonical form, limited to about 1G5 chapters, was established in the TSvent.v-sixth Dynasty, though nothing is known in regard to the origin or the formation of the canon. Papyri of this late date were the first published. (Consult Lepsius, D<ik Todlnibueh der Aeyypter. Leipzig. 1849. republislied by Davis, 1894; De Rougt^, liitnol fnneraire dcs an- eiens Egyptiens, Paris, 1861-76.) Eventually it became evident that all late JISS. were very cor- rupt, and in 1876 H Xaville was appointed by (he Congress of Orientalists to prc|)are a critical edition of the text in use from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Dynasty. The Prussian Gov- ernment, with characteristic liberality, lent its supiiort to the work. The results of Xaville's labor, which appeared in 1886, under the title, Das mgi/ptischc Todlenhuch dcr IStrn bis 20ten Dynastic, show that even at the period covered by the learned editor's investigations, the texts were hopelessly corrupt and can only be under- stood by tracing theiii further back. Many fae- similes of INfSS., with pictures have been pub-