Chapter I: On the Nature of the Office of Deacon in the Christian Church

As it is proposed, in the following pages, to advocate the revival of the office of deacon, it is desirable to have clear and distinct views of its nature. Though nothing can be plainer or more certain, taking the Word of God for our guide, yet there have been various misapprehensions in regard to it. The Church of Rome and the Church of England have considered the deaconship as an order—the first and the lowest in the priesthood; and some Congregationalists have considered it as synonymous with presbyter; and, therefore, so far spiritual in its nature. But there is no foundation for either now. The office solely regards what may be termed the ecclesiastico-secular interests of the Christian Church. It is expressly distinguished from the spiritual, properly so called; and was originally instituted to set the spiritual free from secular occupation. There may be diversity of opinion about some offices in the Christian Church—such as that of the ruling elder—though even as to that, Presbyterians justly wonder that other Christians can have any hesitation; but there is no scope for difference of judgment in regard to the deacon. The fact that there is any such difference is a striking illustration of the power of party and interested prejudice. It is not unnatural to suppose that, as Christianity, though spiritual in itself, deals with men still in the body, and affects, while it is so far dependent for its propagation upon, temporal interests, so that there should be some office in connexion with it to take charge of its secular concerns; and this, accordingly, is the design of the office of deacon. There would have been an obvious defect—at least an unnecessary, and, it may be, injurious blending of the secular and the sacred—had there been no such office.

Though the original institution rose out of a particular emergency—a murmuring as to the provision made for the Hellenist as distinguished from the Hebrew widows at Jerusalem, yet it is plain, though this case had not occurred, there would have been others which would soon have rendered such an appointment indispensable. The progress of Christianity would have demanded it. It was more accordant, however, with the free and unsystematic character of the early Christian Church, to create the office, when it was plainly needed, than to set out with an original formal platform comprehending it. This also commended the institution the more to the acceptance of the humble followers of the Cross.

The original institution, I have said, was designed to meet the case of a particular class of widows; but the office was not created to meet this or all classes of widows exclusively, or even of the whole Christian poor alone. It contemplated a wider sphere—even the separation of the spiritual office of the apostleship and ministry from all unnecessary secular occupation. The care of poor widows came first, but there would soon have been the care of the general poor; and even though these might have been otherwise provided for, yet the collection of money for the maintenance of the ministry and places of worship, and to defray the expenses of the administration of ordinances, would have required such an order of office-bearers as the deacon. The principle which governed the appointment was: “It is not fit (it is not proper or becoming) for the ministers of the Gospel to leave the Word of God, and to serve tables:” whether the tables be those of the poor, or for receiving and paying away money for any cause connected with the Christian Church—such as Christian missions—still they involve work more or less secular, which others can attend to, and from which it is most desirable that the ministers of religion should be set free. Besides unnecessary occupation, there is another reason. The Spirit of God foreseeing how mercenary the Christian Church would one day become, and how injurious this would prove to its character, manifested a remarkable delicacy in regard to all money matters in connexion with the ministry. Hence, under His teaching, the care of the apostles to avoid everything which savoured of the mercenary, or exposed to its temptations and imputations. Doubtless it was from this cause that Paul would receive no provision from some of the Churches among which he laboured, and preferred to earn his bread by tent-making,—probably working at this employment over night, after preaching during the day, rather than be indebted to those who would misapprehend his standing upon his undoubted rights as a minister. It was doubtless for the same reason that, in sending the contributions of the Church of Corinth to the poor saints in Judea, the apostle would not go alone, nor take charge of the collection himself; but stated to the Corinthians, “When I come,whomsoever ye shall approve by your letters, them will I send to bring your liberality to Jerusalem: and if it be meet that I go also, they shall go with me,” (1 Cor. xvi. 1-4.) Here was delicacy, one would say almost to excess, but the apostle acted upon it to the full. Accordingly Titus, the evangelist, was sent with the collection, or rather he offered his services on the occasion. And Paul adds, “and we have sent with him the brother whose praise is in the Gospel through all the Churches; and not only so, but who was also chosen of the Churches to travel with us with this gift, which is administered by us to the glory of the same Lord.” And then Paul adds, showing the source of his extreme caution, “Avoiding this, that no man should blame us in this abundance, which is ministered by us; providing for honest things, not only in the sight of the Lord, but also in the sight of men,” (2 Cor viii. 18-21.) We cannot doubt that it was from the same fine delicacy—the gift of the Spirit—that while the bishop or minister of each congregation was one, the deacons were numerous; at least were more than one. In the Church at Jerusalem, even at the outset, there were seven. The duties of deacons being often private, almost confidential, hid from general publicity, it was the more necessary that the trust should not be committed to a single individual. It was chiefly by having a board or court of officers that the Church could have confidence that the funds would be properly applied.

As the office of deacon was restricted to the temporal interests of the Church, so it was permanent in its nature. It was designed to form a part of the constitution of the Church in all countries and in all ages. Some of the offices, such as those of apostle, evangelist, prophet, &c., were obviously extraordinary—intended to last, like the miraculous spiritual gifts, but for a season, till the Church was brought into a condition to sustain itself, with God’s blessing, on the use of outward and ordinary means. But it was otherwise with the office of deacon. Designed as it was to separate what was secular from what was spiritual, and to relieve the spiritual from whatever was suspicious, as well as provide for the poor, it is manifest that this was equally essential in all times and places. If the office of deacon was a good thing at Jerusalem in the first century, it must, on the same ground, be not less important in Scotland in the nineteenth century. Indeed, the reason which prevail now for having such an office, are superior to those which existed in the first age of Christianity. The temptations to secularity, in connexion with the management of the affairs of the Church, have increased, while the high spiritual tone of the infancy of the Gospel has declined. What a rebuke does this anxiety of the apostles to be relieved from even the care of widows, administer to those of their professed successors, who leave the Word of God, and unnecessarily and systematically involve themselves in matters tenfold more secular! If the management of the provision for widows is to be abandoned to a separate and secular officer—a provision which, in some respects, may be called religious—what would they have thought of the almost entire occupation of their time with the mere government of the Church, apart from the grand objects of a Church, or the conduct of the civil affairs of the State, or the cultivation of a taste for the classics of ancient heathenism? Assuredly no apostle could look upon such a state of things with approbation. It appears, then, that the office of deacon in the Christian Church is a permanent one, and that it is intended so to draw off and exhaust the secular, in its different forms, as to leave the other offices—those of the pastor and ruling elder—free to their appropriate spiritual duties. The same reasons which call for the abandonment of a part of the secular, call for the abandonment of the whole; and the same reasons which demanded the separation between the secular and directly religious in the first age, demand it with enlarged force in the artificial and secular age in which we live. So much for the nature of the office. In Appendix I the reader will find an account of the office, as perverted by the Church of England and the Church of Rome. We can scarcely conceive any thing more different from, nay, at more utter variance with, the requirement of God’s Word.