Come, Thou Fount Of Every Blessing
Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing
Come, Thou Fount of ev’ry 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—O fix me on it,
Mount of God’s unchanging love.
Here I raise mine 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 save my soul from danger,
Interposed His precious blood.
O, to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let that grace, Lord, 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; Lord, take and seal it;
Seal it for Thy courts above.
ROBERT ROBINSON had always been prone to wander. Apprenticed to a barber at fourteen, he spent more time reading and playing with friends than cutting hair. Then, still a teen, he went to a George Whitefield meeting, intending to ridicule it—and instead was converted. After his apprenticeship was over, Robinson went into the ministry. He wrote this hymn at the age of twenty-three as he served at the Calvinistic Methodist Church in Norfolk, England.
Late in life, Robinson did stray from the faith. Once, in a stagecoach, he sat by a lady who was reading a hymnbook. She showed him “Come, Thou Fount,” saying how wonderful it was. He tried to change the subject, but couldn’t. Finally he said, “Madam, I am the unhappy man who wrote that hymn many years ago, and I would give a thousand worlds to enjoy the feelings I had then.”
Samuel then took a large stone and placed it between the towns of Mizpah and Jeshanah. He named it Ebenezer (which means “the stone of help”), for he said, “Up to this point the Lord has helped us!”
1 Samuel 7:12
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