ALASKA MISSION.
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[pg 184] 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.