Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing

A gang of rowdy youth started heckling an old woman. “Give her some more liquor, boys!” a young man said. The poor gypsy woman was already so drunk she could hardly stand on her feet. But the wild and reckless young men were determined to get her even more drunk.

“Pour it into her, and we'll get her to tell our fortunes,” 17-year-old Robert Robinson shouted. Turning to the self-appointed leader, the bleary-eyed gypsy pointed a quivering finger and said, “Young man, you will live to see your children and your grandchildren.”

Her words haunted him. “If I'm going to live to see my children and grandchildren,” he thought, “I'll have to change my way of living.” So, that very night, half in fun and half seriously, he took his gang to an open air revival service where the famous evangelist George Whitefield was preaching. “We'll go down and laugh at the poor deluded Methodist,” he explained to his friends.

It was the year 1752, and the Spirit of God was already at work in the troubled heart of the wayward youth. That night, Whitefield preached from Matthew 3:7, “Who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” The message both sobered and frightened young Robinson. He felt that the preacher was speaking to him and only to him.

On December 10, 1755, two years and seven months after hearing that sermon, twenty-year-old Robert Robinson made his peace with God, and found full and free forgiveness through the precious blood of Christ.

Joining the Methodists, and feeling the call to preach, the self-taught Robinson was appointed by John Wesley to the Calvinist Methodist Chapel, Norfolk, England. There, for the celebration of Whitsunday in 1858, three years after his marvelous conversion, he penned his spiritual autobiography in these lines:

Come, thou fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.

Robinson recalled that Samuel, after a battle, had taken a stone and called the name of the stone “Ebenezer,” saying, “Hitherto hath the Lord helped us”. He felt that he should raise a spiritual Ebenezer in his own heart to commemorate the victory of God over Satan three years earlier. So he wrote a stanza containing these lines:

Here I'll raise my Ebenezer,
Hither by Thy help I'm come,
And I hope by thy good pleasure
Safely to arrive at home.

His later life was evidently not an easy one. One day, he met a woman who was studying a hymnal, and she asked how he liked the hymn she was humming. In tears, he replied, “Madam, I am the poor unhappy man who wrote that hymn many years ago, and I would give a thousand worlds, if I had them, to enjoy the feelings I had then.”

That is why the final verse of this hymn has brought tears to millions for over two hundred years:

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I'm constrained to be!
Let that grace now, like a fetter,
Bind my wand'ring heart to Thee:
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here's my heart, O take and seal it;
Seal it for Thy courts above..

~ taken from Moody Church Website

The Precious Lyrics of "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing"

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
Mount of Thy redeeming love.

Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Here by Thy great help I’ve come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

O that day when freed from sinning,
I shall see Thy lovely face;
Clothed then in blood washed linen
How I’ll sing Thy sovereign grace;
Come, my Lord, no longer tarry,
Take my ransomed soul away;
Send thine angels now to carry
Me to realms of endless day.

~ Robert Robinson, 1758