CHAPTER II.

THE QUALIFICATIONS FOR THE DEACONSHIP.

The conjugal relations of the candidate.—His general reputation. His religious character.-His orthodoxy.— His intellectual endowments.-His government of his family, and general conduct of his own temporal affairs.

THE success of an officer must always depend, mainly, upon his qualifications to perform the duties of his office. Incompetent or unfaithful men, either in the Deaconship or the ministry, invariably prove an incubus upon the cause their appointment was intended to promote. The apos tles, guided by these considerations, describe with careful particularity the endowments necessary to be possessed to fit a man for this distinguished station. To the church in Jerusalem they said that they must be:-"Men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost, and wisdom.”* And Paul charged Timothy thus :-"The Deacons must be

* Acts vi. 3.

grave, not double tongued, not given to much wine, not greedy of filthy lucre; holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience. And let these also first be proved, then let them use the office of a deacon, being found blameless. Even so must their wives be grave, not slanderers, sober, faithful in all things. husbands of one wife, their own houses well. the office of a deacon well, purchase to themselves a good degree, and great boldness in the faith which is in Christ Jesus. These things write I unto thee, hoping to come unto thee shortly; but, if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God."*

Let the deacons be the ruling their children and For they that have used

Thus briefly are set forth in the Scriptures, the qualifications for the Deaconship. The subject presents six distinct points, which we will proceed to consider separately.

Whether the qualifications of a brother render him eligible to the Deaconship, is, in the first place, determined by the character of his conjugal relations.

On this part of our subject we are thus admo

* 1 Tim. iii. 8-14.

nished :-" Even so must their wives be grave, not slanderers, sober, faithful in all things. Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife." Upon the first sentence in this text-"Even so must their wives be grave, not slanderers, sober, faithful in all things”—opinions are at variance. But our best and most judicious biblical critics have decided that it does not refer to the deacons' wives, but to another class of women mistaken for them by our translators. It is evident, however, that every man must be, more or less, influenced for good or for evil by his wife. If she does not maintain a reputable character, prudence at least would dictate, that the husband should not be placed in a position which will bring her so in contact with the church as to injure the cause of religion. It is exceedingly desirable that the wives of deacons, and the wives of all other christian men, should fully correspond with the apostolic description. This all, for very many reasons, will frankly confess. Next to the religion of Christ, a pious, intelligent, exemplary, zealous, devoted, affectionate wife, is the most precious gift of God. Happy is that man who is blessed with such a companion through life's weary pilgrimage. But why, if the passage does not describe the wives

of deacons, should our translators have so repre

sented it? I know not.

The church to which

they all belonged, had dispensed with the Deacon ship in its original form, and had made the officer a clergyman. Supposing, as we may conjecture, that a minister's wife ought to be such a woman as Paul describes, and as it is not required of the bishops, and since with them bishops are made of deacons, they determined that it must be required of deacons ! This might probably have been the motive for our present version.

We have four reasons for believing that the passage does not refer to the wives of the deacons. With these we will content ourselves at present, and will resume the subject in a subsequent chapter.

In the first place, the inspired original will not sustain the interpretation. The literal rendering is simply-"Let the women likewise be grave," &c. What women? The conclusion is as natural that the apostle meant some other women as the wives of the deacons.

Secondly, the wives of the deacons are expressly spoken of in the next verse, and therefore, probably not in this.

Thirdly, it is not rational to conclude that more, on the score of religion and fidelity, would be demanded as to the wives of deacons than as to those of bishops, and no such requirements are challenged of the wives of bishops.

Lastly, it is the opinion of expositors generally, in which I feel myself obliged to concur, that the apostle delineates those female assistants to deacons, usually called Deaconesses, of whom we read in several other places in the New Testament, whom we know existed in the apostolic churches, and of whom we hear so much in the writings of the early Christian fathers. He was describing the qualifications of deacons, and continues his theme down to this verse; here he portrays THE WOMEN;" and in the next place the deacons' wives. By these "women" therefore, he must have meant the Deaconesses, who, like the Deacons, must be grave, not slanderers, sober, faithful in all things. But more of this hereafter. We dismiss the passage as having no direct reference to the wives of deacons.

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If we do not materially err in these expositions, the only text which speaks of the conjugal relations of the deacons simply restricts them to one wife, without any especial direction as to what