Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing
One of the 94 hymns we sing together at Cornerstone Reformed Baptist Church on the Gold Coast. Browse the full hymnbook.
Lyrics
Verse 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 God’s unchanging love.
Verse 2
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.
Verse 3
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.
Verse 4
O that day when freed from sinning,
I shall see Thy Lovely Face;
Robed then in blood wash-ed linen
How I’ll sing Thy sovereign grace;
Come, my Lord, no longer tarry,
Take my ransomed soul away;
Gather with Your arms and carry
Me to joys of endless day.
Behind the Hymn
"Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing" was written by Robert Robinson in 1757, when he was only twenty-two years old and had just been converted through the ministry of George Whitefield. Robinson had been an orphaned street urchin in London who fell into trouble with gangs before attending a Whitefield sermon on a dare — the text from Matthew 3:7 haunted him for three years before he finally surrendered his life to Christ. He became a Baptist pastor and penned this hymn for a Pentecost service. The deeply autobiographical text, especially the famous line "prone to wander, Lord, I feel it," reflects Robinson's honest awareness of his own spiritual frailty. Tragically, Robinson did wander later in life, struggling with doubt and worldliness. According to a well-known (though possibly apocryphal) story, a woman once showed him this very hymn on a stagecoach, and Robinson reportedly wept, saying, "I am the poor unhappy man who composed that hymn many years ago, and I would give a thousand worlds to enjoy the feelings I had then."