Though the Seminary at Abeih had a few students preparing for the ministry, under Mr. Calhoun, it could not properly be called a Theological Seminary. Only at Hasbeiya, Hums, and Ain Zehalty had native pastors been found for the churches. There were five churches without pastors. The eight churches had two hundred and forty-five members. The thirty-one common schools numbered a thousand male and one hundred and seventy female pupils. Eight of the teachers were church-members, and four of these were females. The demand for education was beyond the ability of the mission to supply. At the recommendation of the Prudential Committee, a Theological Seminary was commenced at Abeih in May, 1869; and Dr. Jessup from Beirut, and Mr. Eddy from Sidon, were associated with Mr. Calhoun in its instruction. Seven students composed the first class, and, with but one exception, evinced a good Christian spirit, studied hard, and seemed anxious to live an active and useful Christian life. The five winter months of their vacation were spent in evangelical labors. As far back as 1865, there was a prosperous female boarding-school at Beirut, under the care of Mr. Aramon and Miss Rufka Gregory, natives of Syria. In the following year, this school had thirty boarders and twenty day scholars. It was the first Protestant school in Syria that demanded pay for the education of girls, but its receipts for tuition and board equaled about half the expenses. "Among the causes," say the brethren of the Beirut station, "which operated to prevent the raising of the rates of board and tuition to a self-supporting basis, was the existence of competing schools furnished with European teachers, rendering it difficult for the seminary to induce parents to pay the full expense. This was a grave difficulty, and one which, in one form or another, has met every attempt to establish the principle of self-support in Syria, in all departments of our work; but it only makes it the more important that this native institute, with native teachers and adapted to native tastes and habits, should be steadily sustained, lest the impulse already given in the direction of self-support, be lost." A building was completed for the school in 1867, at the cost of about $9,000, chiefly the result of contributions in the United States, but without any organic connection with the mission. Of its seventy-six pupils fifty-seven were boarders, and the income was $3,220 in gold, which was $1,000 short of its expenses. There was still the impediment of unwise competition. The pupils were from Moslem, Greek, and Greek-Catholic, as well as Protestant families; though it was well known that the institution was an evangelizing agency, and that all were expected to attend Protestant worship on the Sabbath, and were daily taught in the Bible.