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Let’s take a closer look at those thick heavy books that sit under most church pews. Many Christians today pass off Hymns as old and irrelevant, if not completely outdated. I think, however, many of us need to reevaluate their worth. Besides the riches of melodies and soul-soothing harmonies accompanying them, the old hymns also have beautiful lyrics that can enrich our lives much more than most of the contemporary songs of our modern day. Overlooking these treasures would be a terrible mistake.

Probably my favorite hymn of all is a well-known song called “Come Thou Fount.” I’m sure most of you have heard and sung it, as it is still pretty popular even after 250 years of being around – the words were written in 1758 by Robert Robinson, and the music came in 1813 courtesy of John Wyeth. Even though it’s so familiar, though, I still find its lyrics to be particularly uplifting—and worthy of a second look.

John Wyeth and Robert Robinson

The first verse (where the song gets its name from) goes like this: “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.” It is a marvelous way to start the song, calling upon God to tune our hearts to sing His praise. That’s an important concept to remember about praising God; our hearts are required, not just our lips, because God looks past outward appearances to the motives of the heart (1 Samuel 16:7). The verse also illustrates poetically three of the many reasons that we praise God: His blessings, His never-ceasing mercy, and His redeeming love.

The Sign of Christ's Victory

Moving on to the next verse, we find a proclamation of thanks for all our Savior has already done for all of us. Now, I don’t know about all of you, but I wasn’t sure what an ‘Ebenezer’ was. I had a vague idea, but the real meaning had been lost to me. So, for the sake of this post, I looked it up. It’s really pretty interesting; in 1 Samuel 7:12, right after the people of Israel repented for past sins and God saved them from the Philistines, Samuel placed a stone in a field and called it Ebenezer, saying “Hitherto hath the LORD helped us.” In Hebrew the word means literally “Stone of Help,” and the dictionary defines an Ebenezer, interestingly enough, as a ‘sign of victory’. The hymn writer must have had this definition in mind; we raise our sign of victory because we have been redeemed by Jesus’ sacrifice; by His help we have come this far, and will safely continue to our eternal home.

Now we come to the third verse, by far my favorite, for it verbalizes a plea for forgiveness and a prayer of humility; it is a prayer we all must pray in order to ‘walk in the light as He is in the light’ (1 John 1:7). “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.”

Now, the final verse I was not so familiar with; it seems most versions omit it, at least most of the ones I’ve sung. It finishes the hymn by reminding us of the future glory to come (1 Peter 1:4). Really, I can’t think of a better way for any song to end than with this theme—the hymn ‘When We See Christ’ deals with this theme throughout all the verses, but as Alton Brown would say, “that’s another show.”

I hope all of you enjoy this hymn as much as I do, and perhaps you have insights that I overlooked! I’d love to hear all of your thoughts. And keep flipping through those Hymnals—they are truly spiritual treasure chests!

—NJ

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