The Beginning
THE BEGINNING
At the beginning something like eighty students were enrolled, fifty of them being men and thirty women. Three houses had been already purchased by the Institution, and another brick structure was at once begun which was finished the following year. The attendance during this year was three times as great as the first year. The students came from all parts of the world. They held religious opinions of every type, and they came to the Institute with different objects. Some of them intended to continue their studies after leaving the Institute; others expected to enter immediately upon active work when they left, indeed, there were many pastors of churches, who came there in order that they might increase their knowledge of practical ways of working in their own churches. Perhaps in no institution of the country would there be manifest a more intense zeal for work than would be found there. The main object of the institution was both practical and simple; it was to give all the students a thorough working knowledge of the Scriptures, in order that they might be equipped for personal Christian work, and at the same time have their own spiritual lives stimulated.
There are, in all, accommodations for about three hundred students. The two departments are kept separate except at the time of lectures, when all come together in the lecture hail of the main building.