The story behind: "Come thou fount" Hymn

THE STORY BEHIND: "COME THOU FOUNT OF EVERY BLESSING" HYMN

Robert Robinson was a rather difficult, headstrong boy, and when his Dad died, things only got worse for his mother. So, when he turned 14 in 1749, his mother sent him to London for an apprenticeship.

To no one’s surprise, he was just as much a troublemaker in London, and to make matters worse he gained some friends and followers as a leader!

When he was 17, he took his gang to a revival service where a well-known preacher at the time, George Whitfield, was speaking. I imagine him saying, “We’ll go down and laugh at the poor deluded Methodist.”

…But something happened that night that Robert wasn’t expecting…

After hearing the message, it moved him deeply and it made him rethink his life and how he was living it.

Nearly three years after hearing that sermon, a twenty-year-old Robert Robinson made his peace with God, and “found full and free forgiveness through the precious blood of Jesus Christ.”

Joining the Methodists, and feeling the call to preach, the self-taught Robinson was appointed by John Wesley himself to the Calvinist Methodist Chapel in Norfolk, England.

It was there, to accompany his sermon for Pentecost Sunday in 1858, the three-year anniversary of his conversion, he penned the words of this hymn: “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing.”

The first stanza is all praise and adoration, very fitting for the occasion, but the last two stanzas almost feel like a spiritual autobiography.

Click here to listen to the song

1

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.

2

Here I raise my Ebenezer;

Hither by Thy help I’m come;

And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,

Safely to arrive at home.

Jesus sought me when a stranger,

Wand’ring from the fold of God;

He, to rescue me from danger,

Interposed His precious blood.

3

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.