It’s #MusicMonday again, and I thought I’d dive back into the hymns this week. Like many hymns that we know today, the version of Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing that we sing today is the result of multiple adaptations from the original text by Robert Robinson found below.
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.Sorrowing I shall be in spirit,
Till released from flesh and sin,
Yet from what I do inherit,
Here Thy praises I’ll begin;
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;
How His kindness yet pursues me
Mortal tongue can never tell,
Clothed in flesh, till death shall loose me
I cannot proclaim it well.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.Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing – Robert Robinson ©Public Domain
Robert Robinson penned this hymn when he was 22 years old and had just become a Methodist. In the brief amount of reading I’ve done on Robinson, it seems to me that he never really found his place among denominations of his time. It’s almost as if his differences with different denominations consumed him to the point that as he aged, he became more removed from the joy that is found in Christ. A widely told story revolves around a conversation that he once had with a young lady who was humming the tune to Come Thou Fount. When she asked what he thought of that hymn, he responded in telling her that he wrote it and wished that he could return to feeling the joy that filled his heart when he wrote it.