NINETY AND NINE.



ON the Aletusch glacier I saw a strange, a beautiful sight the parable of the "Ninety and Nine" reacted 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 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 was lost. One of the shepherds, in his German patois, appealed to us if we had seen it. Fortunately, one of the party had a field glass; with its aid we discovered the lost sheep far up amid a tangle of brushwood, on the rocky mountain side. It was beautiful to see how the shepherd, without a word, left his hundred and ninety-nine sheep out on the glacier waste (knowing they would stand there perfectly still and safe), and went back after the lost sheep; and when he had found it, 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 the Lord's teaching home to us with a vividness which none can realize but those who saw the incident.





 H. Spencer.