Hymn Story: The Ninety and Nine

Six years after her homegoing, Elizabeth Clephane’s poem “The Lost Sheep” caught the eye of well-known evangelistic song leader and composer Ira Sankey. He spotted it in a newspaper he was reading on a train. The poem was simply signed, “Bessie.”

Turning to his traveling companion—evangelist Dwight L. Moody himself—Sankey began to read the poem aloud with all the expression he could muster. Both men were weary after three months of meetings and were on their way to Glasgow for more.

After reading, Sankey asked Moody what he thought of the poem, only to find that Moody was completely absorbed in reading something else. Sankey tore the poem from the newspaper and tucked it into his pocket, saving it for another time. He thought it would make a perfect hymn if set to music.

During the Glasgow meetings, another influential pastor, Horatius Bonar, spoke a brief message on “The Good Shepherd.” When Moody turned to Sankey and asked if he could sing an appropriate solo to close the service, Sankey was caught off guard.

Stepping to the organ, and feeling impressed by the Holy Spirit, he placed the newspaper clipping before him and began to play, compose, and sing the poem as a hymn—for the very first time. We know it today as “The Ninety and Nine.”

Sankey later described the moment this way:

“Note by note the tune was given, which has not been changed from that day to this. As the singing ceased, a great sigh seemed to go up from the meeting, and I knew that the song had reached the hearts of my Scotch audience.”

But God was not done working. In that same audience sat Elizabeth Clephane’s sister, who wrote to Sankey afterward to tell him more about the hymn’s writer. When Sankey later published the hymn, he made sure to attribute the text to Elizabeth C. Clephane.

The Ninety and Nine

by Elizabeth Clephane

There were ninety and nine that safely lay
In the shelter of the fold,
But one was out on the hills away,
Far off from the gates of gold—
Away on the mountains wild and bare,
Away from the tender Shepherd's care,
Away from the tender Shepherd's care.

"Lord, thou hast here Thy ninety and nine:
Are they not enough for thee?"
But the Shepherd made answer: "'This of mine
Has wandered away from me:
And altho' the road be rough and steep
I go to the desert to find my sheep,
I go to the desert to find my sheep. 

But none of the ransomed ever knew
How deep were the waters crossed:
Nor how dark was the night that the Lord passed thro'
Ere he found his sheep that was lost,
Out in the desert he heard its cry—
Sick and helpless, and ready to die,
Sick and helpless, and ready to die. 

"Lord, whence are those blood-drops all the way
That mark out the mountain's track?"
"They were shed for one who had gone astray
Ere the Shepherd could bring him back."
"Lord, whence are thy hands so rent and torn?"
They are pierced tonight by many a thorn,"
"They are pierced tonight by many a thorn."

But all through the mountains, thunder-riven,
And up from the rocky steep,
There rose a glad cry to the gate of heaven,
"Rejoice! I have found my sheep!"
And the angels echoed around the throne,
"Rejoice, for the Lord brings back His own!"
"Rejoice, for the Lord brings back His own."