Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing

Robert Robinson was born in England in 1735. He began working at a very young age due to his father's death. His mother was said to have been a godly woman and had hoped that her son would become a clergyman in the Church of England. Their poverty forbade that, and he began an apprenticeship with a barber at the age of 11.

He began hanging out with the wrong group of friends, and one day, they decided to begin harrassing a drunken gypsy. They demanded that she tell them their fortunes. She told Robinson that he would live to see his children and his grandchildren. He took this seriously and decided that he had better change his ways if he was to live that long.

He went to hear George Whitefield, a methodist preacher. Whitefield preached on Matthew 3:7, titled "O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" This sent Robinson into a deep sense of sin that lasted 3 years. Around the age of twenty, he found peace in believing.

He remained in London until 1758. Studying the ministries of Gill, Wesley and other evangelical ministers. He was invited to a Baptist church in 1759. The call was to "supply the pulpit". He first preached on January 8, 1759.

Towards the end of his life, he became friends with a Universalist and it was rumored that he denied the divinity of Christ. After supposedly becoming a Universalist, he preached clearly and declared that Jesus was God, and added, "Christ in Himself is a person infinitely lovely as both God and man."

Robert Robinson has two hymns that have become favorites. "Brightness of the eternal glory, shall Thy praise unuttered lie?" and "Come, Thou Fount of every blessing".

There was controversy at one time about the authorship of Come Thou Fount. There is now no doubt about who wrote the hymn.

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.

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 rescue me from danger, interposed His precious blood.

O to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, 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.