“Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing”: Robert Robinson’s hymn about a wandering heart

He was a teenage barber’s apprentice in London who went with friends to mock a preacher. Instead, Robert Robinson was gripped by what he heard. Three years later, aged 22, he wrote a hymn about grace and about his own restless heart. “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” has been sung ever since, and one line in particular has made generations of worshippers pause.

Robert Robinson and Whitefield

Robinson was born in 1735 in Norfolk, England. His father died when he was young, and his mother sent him to London to train as a barber. He fell in with a rough crowd. In 1752, Robinson and his friends went to hear the evangelist George Whitefield, intending to jeer. Whitefield’s sermon on the coming judgement troubled Robinson deeply, and after a long struggle he committed his life to Christ in 1755.

The hymn and its Ebenezer

Robinson wrote the hymn in 1758 for his congregation in Norfolk. It opens with a prayer: “Come, thou Fount of every blessing, tune my heart to sing thy grace; streams of mercy, never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise.”

The second verse contains a line that puzzles many modern singers: “Here I raise my Ebenezer.” The word comes from 1 Samuel 7:12, where the prophet Samuel set up a stone and named it Ebenezer, saying, “Thus far the Lord has helped us.” To raise an Ebenezer is to mark what God has done.

Prone to wander

The final verse holds the hymn’s most famous confession: “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.” Many believers recognise themselves in those words. Robinson became a Baptist minister in Cambridge and a respected writer. A story often told, though hard to verify, says that late in life, troubled by his own spiritual drift, he heard a woman singing his hymn and wept.

The tune and the hymn in Africa

In America, the hymn is usually sung to Nettleton, a folk-style tune first published in the early nineteenth century. In Britain, other tunes are also used. The hymn has enjoyed renewed popularity in recent decades through new arrangements by contemporary worship bands, introducing it to younger congregations. Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian churches across West Africa sing the hymn, and many choirs perform it in English and local languages at anniversaries and thanksgiving services.

Robinson wrote about a heart that wanders while he was still young enough to wander far. That honesty is why people who have never heard his name still sing his words with feeling.