The following sentences from a personal letter of Miss Anna L. Dawes state
a profound truth in terse and impressive form:
"If any one is willing to go up there and live with those Eskimos,
I think the rest of us may well enough agree to help. Indeed,
nothing has been so good for me for some time as his (Mr. Lopp’s)
visit. It not only makes our Christianity (mine at least) look
like a mustard seed, but makes you wonder whether it isn’t a
_dead_ seed at that! I have been to hear Mr. Moody to-day, but he
didn’t begin to give me such "conviction of sin" as the urgent and
eager interest Mr. Lopp showed in going back to his people up
there. I wonder just what the Lord does think of us all--some of
us, anyway?"
Mr. Lopp, whom Miss Dawes refers to, is pleading for funds to make it
possible to open the mission among the Eskimos. The American Missionary
Association was obliged to discontinue it for a year on account of the
straitened condition of the treasury. We are now making every effort to
gather funds outside of the current income of the Association, that there
may be at least one Christian mission conducted by Congregationalists in
this great northern mission field. Mr. Lopp’s plea for "_his_ people" and
abandon of self-sacrifice both on the part of himself and his wife,
impress every one, as they did Miss Dawes.
This is the only mission of the Congregational denomination in Alaska. No
other denomination plans to occupy this station if given up by the
American Missionary Association. The work requires about five hundred
dollars more than has been subscribed, and this must be in hand by the
first of June, when it is necessary for Mr. Lopp to sail, if he goes this
year.