He now, with a few friends, established a sort of colony in Würtemberg, where an effort was made to put into daily practice these high aspirations, and the number of adherents throughout Europe and in America grew as his views began to be more widely promulgated and understood. In 1867 the more prominent members of the society held a meeting, at which it was decided that as the second advent of the Messiah was expected to occur in Palestine, the Holy Land was the fitting place for the establishment of the central point of the Church which was preparing itself to receive him; that there should be laid the corner-stone of the new spiritual temple which gave the name of the society; and that it was the first duty of those who were waiting for his coming to restore the land to which so many Biblical promises especially attached. While they considered that the new kingdom which was to own Christ as its king was to embrace all those who were prepared to receive him, in all lands and from among all races, yet the spiritual throne would be erected in Palestine, and its material restoration must be a necessary preliminary to its final and ultimate redemption. It was therefore decided that while the great majority of the members of the society should remain in Europe to witness for the truth, and to contribute to the support of the attempt to be made in the Holy Land, a certain number should proceed thither to establish themselves in trade and agriculture, and endeavour by the example of honest industry to elevate the native population and redeem the land from its present waste and desolate condition. In 1868 Mr. Hoffman, Mr. Hartegg, and some others went to Constantinople with a view of obtaining a firman from the Porte, but, failing in this, they proceeded in the following year to Palestine, where, attracted by the great advantages of soil, climate, and position offered by the lands at the foot of Mount Carmel, in the neighbourhood of Haifa, they fixed upon that locality as the initial point of the enterprise. Hither shortly flocked agriculturists and handicraftsmen representing all the important industries, and they proceeded to lay out their village and build their houses on the slope between the foot of the mount and the sea, about a mile to the westward of the native town; but they soon found that it was impossible to do this without meeting with the most strenuous opposition on the part of the native government, and incurring the covert hostility of the monks who have for seven hundred years enjoyed a spiritual monopoly of Mount Carmel. As the colonists were almost without exception men of very moderate means, and believed in the responsibilities of individual ownership, and not in any communistic system, they soon found themselves engaged in a severe and unequal struggle.