 According to Thurston, there can be no doubt that in their first institution the deaconesses were intended to discharge those same charitable offices, connected with the temporal well being of their poorer fellow Christians, which were performed for the men by the deacons.But in one particular, the instruction and baptism of catechumens, their duties involved service of a more spiritual kind.The universal prevalence of baptism by immersion and the anointing of the whole body which preceded it rendered it a matter of propriety that in this ceremony the functions of the deacons should be discharged by women.