There is,

generally, if not in every case, the promise is for life. however, in both a certain short probation, about six months or a year, before that final promise is made. But there are two or three stages in the progress to a full sister, which are steps towards the act of consecration, at each of which stages there is generally a change of name, some religious ceremony, and some slight change n dress. When the vow is taken, the candidate is consecrated by he bishop, is thenceforward called a sister, and wears the full niform of the order. In one of the Sisterhoods, there are the ollowing orders and names :-Superior, assistant-superior, vicars, onfirmed sisters, probationers, serving sisters, postulants, associates. This arrangement runs downwards, from the highest to the lowest rade, and is, no doubt, a full development of the system. In the ess developed forms there are not more, perhaps, than three or four of these orders and names.

They agree in being under the management and control, as the highest authority, of a committee of clergymen, with the clergyman of the parish as chaplain, and the bishop of the diocese as visitor. All their arrangements in the house, and in the district work, are bus strictly clerical in direction, so that the institution, under either ame, is emphatically a religious house, in the spirit of the Roman atholic use of that phrase.

They agree also in the work which they undertake,—that is, all inds of charitable and Christian service in visiting the poor, the ck, in teaching ragged-schools, in reformatories for the fallen, &c. ; ich works as have hitherto always been done in greater or less egree by free Christians, by district visitors, and others, and is eing done now in ever-increasing measure all over the country, ithout any such associations as these. It will be seen, then, that these opposing parties in the one hurch agree in the essential features of this recently-incorporated gency. They differ from each other chiefly in details. Some of lese details are, however, important. "The Sisterhood" was first the field, and the Deaconess Institution looks very much like a evice to catch those members of the church who are in violent pposition to High Churchmanship. There is more of freedom,— hat is, less of severity,-in the vows required from the deaconess. The term of devotement being limited, there may come an end to he vow, without the necessity of running away, and without the ain of feeling that a vow has been broken. There is probably little less severity, also, in the enforcement of rules, and in he rules themselves, as to religious duties, silence, &c., and yet, n one of these Deaconess Institutions, of which we happen to know hat it is one of the most liberal, the sisters are required to attend chapel four times every day-three times to hear prayers read, and once to sit in silence, which is called communion. And they are

forbidden to speak to each other after retiring to their bedrooms. In details like these they differ. In essential character-in the principle which lies at the base of the system, the Evangelical and Tractarian societies are one and the same institution. The name is changed, because the Evangelical younger son is ashamed that any one should think he is a brother of his High Church neighbour, or that they are both sons of their ancient mother the Roman Catholic Church. But the moment we draw the curtains on which the two different names are worked, we discover the same or similar things behind. And when we go a step further, and compare the so-called Protestant institutions with the Catholic institutions, we find there is no essential difference between them. We say this notwithstanding that the Superior of one of the French Catholic Sisterhoods of Charity, in writing to Miss Goodman, says: "You may set on foot philanthropic societies, but a real religious order is an impossibility outside the Catholic Church." We have italicised the word "real." We believe it to be rightly used as to the minute details of the Sisterhoods, but as to the fundamental principle it i very manifest that English Protestant clergymen are not stranger to it. Then we are told, by one whose position and whose facts an evidence of the truth of what she affirms, that there are twenty-five Sisterhoods in which in one form or another the threefold vow a obedience, chastity, and poverty, is enforced upon and taken by Englishwomen, with the sanction and in the presence of English clergymen and bishops of the English Church. We may b astounded at the discovery, but we can only accept the assurance which Madame Dupuis has kindly given us.

Great efforts have been made by the advocates of the Deaconess to make Scripture support the appointment. Now we very cheer fully concede that Phoebe was a deacon-the New Testament doe not know the word deaconess—of the church at Cenchrea. We are quite willing to believe that Euodias and Syntyche were deacons in the church at Philippi-that Mary, Julia, and others may have been deacons in the church at Rome-that in Paul's instructions to Timothy about the choice of church officers, he first describes the requirements for men deacons, and then for women deacons, not "wives," as we have it in I. Tim. iii. 11. We can also freely allow that the records of the early period of Church history shew that women deacons were part of the church organization. But when we have made this unquestioning concession, what then? Is there a vestige of evidence in all this to justify the severance of women, of young women, from the sphere for which God has made them, to shut them up to works of charity, which, from their formal, official, and enforced character, lose more than half their religious value? So far from finding in Scripture any vindication for such an institution, we discern in the whole tone of Christianity a stern rebuke of the false pretence.

An Evangelical clergyman would almost as soon go with us to Rome itself as go with us to Devonport to find the true development of the principle on which these institutions are founded. And we confess we might, even with advantage to our Protestant sympathies, go to many Roman Catholic Sisterhoods rather than to Devonport. In them our instinct of the individual freedom of the conscience would be less insulted, and our conviction of the necessity of something like equality among persons of the same order and work, would be less offended than in Miss Sellon's establishment. But the best way would be to go to both, to the one and to the other. For we hold that in the worst of these institutions we see but the development of the germ which is in them all. Every Deaconess Institution, however guarded, has in it the elements of those absurdities which are in full flower at Devonport. It is hardly too much to say that the evils grow with the growth of the institution more rapidly in some than in others. But in all, as in the Sisterhood at Clewer, as soon as the loving heart of woman is diverted from its own ever-forming channels of benevolence, and confined and restricted to the direction and domination of the priesthood, then it ceases to be good and becomes evil. The works of charity which were good lose their goodness because they cease to be the promptings of a good and true heart. The words of the Bishop of Oxford, in reply to the silly pretensions of Dr. Pusey at the recent Oxford Congress were as weighty as they were wise. He said, "I have the very deepest objection to apply the word 'religious' to such a life in any way whatever. I think it was

adopted at a time when the standard of lay piety was very low; and, at all events, no good seems to me to be got by the use of a word ambiguous at least in its meaning, and which seems to imply that God can be better served in the unmarried sisterhood than in the blessed and holy state of matrimony." Yet this idea of the religious in the life of the sister is the great distinctive feature of these Sisterhoods; and we believe that Dr. Pusey expresses the feeling of the sisters and their clerical directors, both in High and Low Church, when he said, "The Sister of Mercy is the pioneer for the parish priest." They are intended, in fact, to do the work of the clergyman. Their ordination by the bishop constitutes them officers of the church, makes them a separate class of the community. The evil and the wrong of the whole movement lie in this fact of separation. It implies, and the sisters are taught to believe, that such separation is necessary for such work-that their separation is a religious service that, consequently, their position in the church and the world is much better than it was when they were fulfilling the duties of their former sphere of life, or than that of those who are doing God's work in caring for the comforts of parents, and brothers, and sisters, brightening the household circle by their

presence and their virtues, and soothing the cares of father, or mother, or husband by their tender sympathies and their kind services.

It is no use to say you will guard these institutions from abuse. They cannot be guarded. All experience affirms the impossibility of such prevention. If the material which is to be thus moulded and used had no affections—no tastes-no instincts-no passions, then your promise might at any rate be admitted as a possibility. But it is not so. What so intractable as woman, and yet what so trusting? Subject her nature to a priest or a church, and you have in her a more devoted servant than a man will be, but you have also one in whom unreasoning religiousness will pass for religion, you will create an instrument, you will destroy a soul. Again wệ say, read the history of Sisterhoods to confirm or refute this statement. In the older Sisterhoods of England the statement is proved In the Deaconesses there has not yet been time enough for the evils to effloresce into perfection,

It is urged very strongly by Mr. Howson that the surplus femal population is an argument in favour of these foundations. Thi answer is, two evils cannot make one good. God made man on and one. The natural increase of the race has not diverged much from this Divine ratio. By ruthless and generally unprinciple and unnecessary wars we have left a large proportion of wome without their natural companions. What then? Must we commi another evil to make up for that first wrong? And is it not at evil to shut up these women from the probability of marriage? May we divert the loving, life-giving influences of our daughters from the home circle to which they belong, to direct them exclusively int channels where there can be no reciprocal sympathies. Are we required to send our daughters away to nurse the suffering poor and leave our own weary head and suffering body to the care of hirelings? Is this Christianity? Is this the Divine order? Does this consist with the first principles of the God-appointed family institution? All pleas derived from the claim of the poor, from the unemployed multitudes of educated and Christian women, sink to nothing in comparison with this claim. For it is Divine, it is fundamental, it is everlasting. We speak what we know in saying that already these institutions have thus taken young ladies from the circle of domestic duties and parental claims. And we shall be much surprised if, as they succeed, there is not generated in our English homes another of those foes to the Church clergy which are already not a few in this free England. If the fathers of England do rise against this robbery of their daughters, the blow will not only demolish Sisterhoods and Deaconess Institutions, but will fall heavily upon the entire church.

Nor is there the plea of necessity for such organizations. For

there is not a single work which these societies contemplate, which could not be done by these same ladies living at home, and done, too, immeasurably better. A lady of education who spends three or four hours daily in visiting the poor, tending the sick, or teaching the young, requires the change, the freshness, the renewing, which the evening in the family circle alone can give. But these poor secluded creatures return only to their institution. The dullness which is the offspring of weariness is driven in upon the soul by the dull quietness of the surroundings of the institution life, and the consequence is, the work which at the first may have had in it the warmth of genial and benevolent impulses, becomes a mere work. Charity sinks into a trade, the heart loses its elasticity, and the Sister of Mercy becomes a withered woman.

Is there, then, nothing to be said in favour of the institutions? We answer, nothing for the institution, but much, very much for the work. There is nothing in Scripture to favour them. For, though, as we have seen, the Scriptures do favour the appointment of female Deacons, yet, remembering the difference in the social, domestic habits of the times and places in which they were appointed, it is easy to see that much work in the church could only be done by women, and required the appointment of persons for it, which in these times and countries is done by men. And, were it not so, the appointment of one or two women in each church unto special church duties, is no foundation for institutions such as the clergy of the Church of England are forming all over the country.

Nor is there anything in history. The Roman Catholic Church has history enough; and the German institutions differ in origin and in detail so palpably, as only in minor particulars to admit of somparison.

Of the work much might be said; and in the Church of England very much is being done. The district visitors, which are part of the working staff of almost every clergyman, are the three female deacons of the church. To prepare, in a higher degree, these agencies, and to multiply them in every district, will be a vastly higher service to the church and the world, than to found and spend money on institutions. Free service, the promptings to which can be constantly renewed by the communion of free society, will preserve its power much longer, and be more healthful, than service rendered of force, though that force be no other than the compulsion of a recorded vow and a consecration ceremony. And it is our firm conviction that, in what measure the church clergy sacrifice the free system of lady-visitors to the sister-visiting, they will sacrifice true and enduring power among the very classes whom they seek to benefit. It is also our conviction that the inevitable tendency of the whole movement is to increase the priestly character of the clergy, and therein to widen the distance between them and the