Elizabeth Clephane

18 June 1830—19 February 1869

ELIZABETH CECILIA DOUGLAS CLEPHANE, 1830–1869, daughter of Andrew Clephane, Sheriff of Fife. As a child she was always fond of poetry, and when about fifteen years old began to confide to a younger sister what she had written. For years these two held what they called “literary seances.” She had a vivid imagination, and used to improvise wonderful stories with hairbreadth escapes.

The editress of a child’s magazine, The Children’s Hour, having asked her for a contribution, she wrote two or three hymns which she thought might suit—among the rest “The Ninety and Nine,” published under the title of “The Lost Sheep.” Some years after, when she was dead, Moody and Sankey came on their first visit to Scotland (in 1874). While in the train, on their way to the Highlands, Mr. Sankey looking over his hymn-book in search of something that would suit shepherds, whom he expected they would have to address, could find nothing. Taking up a paper, The Christian Age, that had been left lying on the seat by some former passenger, and glancing over it idly he came upon “The Ninety and Nine,” copied out of The Children’s Hour.[1] And that evening he sang it, the tune coming to him as he went on. At the end of the meeting Mr. Moody said to him, “Wherever did you get that hymn?” “I got it in answer to prayer,” was the reply.

It was republished, along with seven others, in The Family Treasury, 1872–74 (then edited by the Rev. William Arnot) under the title “Breathings on the Border.” The following lines from one of the other hymns are interesting for the light they cast on the singer’s own ideal of life and duty—

The healing and the balm,
The crown upon the brow,
The trial o’er, the triumph won—
Oh God! to have this now.
Not so, O Lord! not this,
The boon I ask from Thee,
But for Thy strength to do the work
My God hath set for me.

It is impossible to give all the instances of the use God made of Miss Clephane’s beautiful hymn “The Ninety and Nine”—“very affecting and beautiful,” Bishop How calls it—but one which Mr. Sankey told her sister may be given: Some time after their return to America the two evangelists were taking a tour “up country,” where there were only rough men engaged in “lumbering.” There was one man who would not listen to them nor come to their meeting, one man who would have nothing to do with them—an open scoffer. Judge of their surprise when next morning this very man came to them in extreme agitation with the jailer’s cry, “What must I do to be saved?” Then he told them that sitting outside his hut the evening before the breeze bore down to his ear the words of “The Ninety and Nine,” and the spirit of God sent it home to his soul with power.

Much of the information given in this sketch was kindly supplied by Miss Clephane’s sister.

by Duncan Campbell
Hymns and Hymn Makers (1898)

James Mearns (1892) gave the date of the paper as 13 May 1874.

Featured Hymns:

Beneath the cross of Jesus
The Ninety and Nine

Publications of Hymns & Poems:

The Children’s Hour

“The Lost Sheep” (“There were ninety and nine”), 1868, pt. 2, p. 15.

The Family Treasury

“Beneath the cross of Jesus,” 1872, p. 398: Google Books
“Dim eyes for ever closed,” 1872, p. 398: Google Books
“Who climbeth up too high,” 1872, p. 552: Google Books
“Into His summer garden,” 1873, p. 245: Google Books
“From my dwelling midst the dead,” 1873, p. 365: Google Books
“The day is drawing nearly done,” 1873, p. 389: Google Books
“Life light waneth to an end,” 1874, p. 595.
“The ninety and nine,” 1874, p. 595.

Related Resources

James Mearns, “Elizabeth Cecilia Clephane,” A Dictionary of Hymnology (London: J. Murray, 1892), pp. 238–239: HathiTrust

Duncan Campbell, “Elizabeth Cecilia Douglas Clephane,” Hymns and Hymn Makers (London: A. & C. Black, 1898), pp. 135–136: Archive.org

The New Biographical Dictionary of Scottish Women (Edinburgh University Press, 2018): WorldCat

Elizabeth Clephane, Hymnary.org: https://hymnary.org/person/Clephane_EC

J.R. Watson, “Elizabeth Clephane,” Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology:
http://www.hymnology.co.uk/e/elizabeth-cecilia-douglas-clephane