Sunday, November 13, 2005

The Best Stanza You May Never Have Sung

The fourth stanza of "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" made me smile from ear to ear when I sang it for the first time Friday night. I haven't been able to track down the story on this one, but apparently it was not written by Robert Robinson, the author of the first three stanzas, but was added later (recently, perhaps?—it's not in the Majesty Hymnal) by Bradford Brown. I hope it makes you smile as well.
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 God's unchanging love.

Here I raise my 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,
Wandering 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 that grace now 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.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Ben,

Wow, great 4th stanza. Where in the world did you find it?

I found your blogsite through Scott Dunford's site. You probably don't remember me but I was on your camp team at nbbc years back.

I'm married to Matt Horn and we just had our first baby this summer. What are you up to?

Thanks again - love the sovereignty focus of that stanza,
Aliica

Ben said...

Great to hear from you, Alicia. I do remember you—even the last time I bumped into you on New Year's Eve in Milwaukee. I heard you and Matt were married, probably from Scott. Maybe Matt has told you we were roommates one year in college. Congratulations on the addition to your family! E-mail me sometime and let me know what you guys are up to. My address is in the right sidebar.

We sang the song at the close of a service last Friday night at Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, MD. I stopped by as I was passing through town.

Anonymous said...

This is awesome. Just researched it and found that it was original to the song, first published one year after it was penned. You can see a helpful research article here that shows these four stanzas were published in 1758. http://books.google.com/books?id=I-0sAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA252&lpg=PA252&dq=A+Col%C2%ADlect%C2%ADion+of+Hymns+Used+by+the+Church+of+Christ+in+Angel+Al%C2%ADley,+Bishopsgate,+1759&source=bl&ots=tT0K72jNlT&sig=pZii1retXNtz5HzaS8fX3emkjhg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ZLRAUaKtGKbs2QXVwIC4CA&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=A%20Col%C2%ADlect%C2%ADion%20of%20Hymns%20Used%20by%20the%20Church%20of%20Christ%20in%20Angel%20Al%C2%ADley%2C%20Bishopsgate%2C%201759&f=false

Nick Brown said...

Thank you, Anonymous. That was just the reference I needed. Wikipedia lists FIVE stanzas -- do you know anything about 2a and 3b?