THE NINETY-AND-NINE

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 21, 1878

THE NINETY-AND-NINE.

On the Aletsch Glacier I saw a strange and beautiful sight,—the parable of the “Ninety-and-nine” re-acted to the letter. One day we were making our way with ice-ax and alpenstock down the glacier, when we observed a flock of sheep following their shepherds over the intricate windings between the crevasses, and so passing from the pastures on the one side of the glacier to the pastures on the other. The flock had numbered two hundred, all told; but on the way one sheep had got lost. One of the shepherds, in his German patois, appealed to us if we had seen it. Fortunately one of our party had a field-glass. With its aid we discovered the sheep far up in a tangle of brushwood, on the rocky mountain side. It was beautiful to see how the shepherd, without a word, left his one hundred and ninety-nine sheep out on the glacier waste (knowing they would stand there perfectly still and safe), and went clambering back after the lost sheep until he found it. And he actually put it on his shoulder and “returned rejoicing.” Here was our Lord’s parable enacted before our eyes, though the shepherd was all unconscious of it; and it brought our Lord’s teaching home to us with a vividness which none can realize but those who saw the incident.—Sel.