CHRIST the DISSATISFIED SHEPHERD: “If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them goes astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine and go to the mountains to seek the one that is straying?” (Mt 18:12). George Clephane, a young Scot, came to Canada in 1842. One cold winter morning he was found insensible by the road. He never recovered and was buried in Fergus, Ontario. Back in Scotland, his godly sister Elizabeth grieved over the black sheep whom she had loved, and still hoped that somehow he had been saved in his dying hours. To comfort her own heart, she penned the words: “There were ninety and nine that safely lay.” She died in 1869, her poem unpublished. But it found its way into a Glasgow newspaper in 1874, just when Moody and Sankey were preaching there. One night, after Moody spoke on the Good Shepherd, he asked Sankey to sing. Sankey, who had clipped the poem from the paper, sang impromptu the hymn that has since blessed millions.