Come, Thou Fount Of Every Blessing: A Song History

← Back to Browse By Song

Robert Robinson (1735–1790) was born at Swaffham in Norfolk and sent to London as a teenager to learn hairdressing. Hearing George Whitefield preach in 1752 set off his conversion, and he went on to serve as a Baptist pastor in Cambridge for nearly three decades.[1][2] He wrote this hymn in 1758, and the notes on Hymnary.org label it a hymn for Whitsuntide (Pentecost).[3][2] A list of Robinson's publications in his own papers records that a Mr. Wheatley of Norwich printed it that year. The earliest copy known today, though, is in a 1759 collection for a London congregation meeting in Angel Alley, Bishopsgate, where it has four stanzas.[3][4] Martin Madan reprinted it in 1760 with three stanzas and some altered lines, and most later hymnals have followed his shorter version.[3][4] In the nineteenth century the hymn was claimed for Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, on the strength of a 1759 manuscript. The Hymnary.org notes weigh the evidence and conclude firmly for Robinson.[3]

Etching of a wide, windswept heath under a stormy sky with distant windmills

John Crome, Mousehold Heath, etching, c. 1810–13. The Cleveland Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0).

The melody now sung to it, NETTLETON, is American. It first appeared under the name HALLELUJAH, in two parts and already set to Robinson's words, in John Wyeth's Repository of Sacred Music, Part Second (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 1813). The book's index marks it as a new tune and names no composer.[5][4] The later name points to the evangelist Asahel Nettleton (1783–1844), and he is often credited with the tune. The hymnologist William J. Reynolds, quoted on Hymnary.org, found "no evidence that Nettleton wrote any tunes during his life."[5][4] The Hymnology Archive finds the tune printed as NETTLETON by 1852, and it traces the harmony most hymnals use to an 1878 Methodist Episcopal hymnal.[4] The folk-hymn scholar George Pullen Jackson placed the melody in the same family as the children's song "Go Tell Aunt Rhody."[5] The text has had other tunes too, including JEWIN STREET from about 1765 and WARRENTON from William Walker's shape-note book The Southern Harmony (1838).[4]

Hymnary.org lists the text in more than 2,400 hymnals and the NETTLETON tune in more than 1,100.[3][5] One word in the text has drawn objections. When the United Methodist hymnal was being revised in the late 1980s, the committee was asked to drop the word "Ebenezer," which comes from 1 Samuel 7:12. The committee kept it because no suitable replacement could be found.[2] Stephen Seifert includes it in his mountain dulcimer collection Join the Jam: Gospel Edition, arranged in DAD tuning.[6]

Find books with Come, Thou Fount Of Every Blessing for sale →

Sources

  1. Hymnary.org: "Robert Robinson".
  2. Discipleship Ministries (United Methodist Church): "History of Hymns" article on Robert Robinson's 1758 hymn.
  3. Hymnary.org: text page for Robert Robinson's 1758 hymn.
  4. Hymnology Archive: article on Robert Robinson's 1758 hymn.
  5. Hymnary.org: "NETTLETON".
  6. Stephen Seifert: "Join the Jam Gospel Edition".