Hymn of the Month....

At my church we focus on a new hymn each month in addition to the other songs we sing on Sunday mornings. It's wonderful because we are able to learn new a lovely hymns that we may not have heard before; so I thought it would be interesting to do something like that on this blog.

Each month there will be a post on the background of a certain hymn: when, by whom, and why it was written. This month will be one of my favorites, Come Thou Fount...

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. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.

It was written by Robert Robinson in 1757 when he was twenty-two; those were the original verses which have sadly been revised in recent decades.

Mr. Robinson's father died when he was young and as he grew up, he lead a reckless and fruitless life. However, he heard a sermon by George Whitefield that filled him with the dread of God's wrath, and in response he became a Methodist minister.

Later in life he turned to Unitarianism because he doubted the full divinity of Christ. It was after this that a lady approached him while in a stagecoach, and asked him what he thought of his well-known hymn. He gave this response,

"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."

He died on the 9, June 1790.

Although the story of the hymnist is very sad, it is still one of my favorite hymns.