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Everywhere the people were anxious to know more of the new way, which was everywhere spoken against. One of the persons received to the Abeih church, about this time, had a somewhat singular experience. In the war with the Druzes, nine years before, his party plundered a large village. In one of the houses he saw a Bible, which he seized and carried home.
At four of these Beirût, Abeih, Sidon, and Hasbeiya churches had been organized. Fifteen members were added during the year 1856. The number admitted from the beginning was one hundred and six, of whom eighty were living and in regular standing. The average number of hearers was about four hundred and twenty; but the whole number was of course much larger.
The seminary was now revived, not at Beirût, but at Abeih, fifteen hundred feet above the sea-level, in a temperate atmosphere, and with a magnificent prospect of land and sea. The experience gained in the former seminary was of use in reconstructing the new one. Its primary object was to train up an efficient native ministry.
It should be added, that on the day the Maronites left Abeih, a strong proclamation came out from the Maronite and Greek Catholic bishops at Beirût to all their people, requiring them to protect all the members of the American mission. The reflections of Mr. Smith on the death of the persecuting Patriarch, are just and impressive.
Connected with the Beirût station, were four schools for boys and girls, and one for girls alone. In Suk el-Ghûrb, a village four miles from Abeih, a Protestant secession from the Greek Church was in progress, embracing fourteen families, and religious services were held with them every Sabbath.
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