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Robert Robinson was twenty-two when he wrote Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing. It has been sung for more than two and a half centuries, and it contains two lines that people still stumble over — one because the word is strange, and one because it is uncomfortably honest.
Below you will find the complete lyrics, a plain explanation of both lines, and our own recording of the hymn.
Listen: Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing
Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing — Full Lyrics
Verse 1
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.
Verse 2
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,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood.
Verse 3
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.
The Ebenezer line, explained
It is the line that makes people assume the hymn is quoting Dickens. It is not. Ebenezer is Hebrew for “stone of help,” and it comes from 1 Samuel 7:12. After God gave Israel an unlikely victory, the prophet Samuel set up a stone and named it Ebenezer, saying, “Hitherto hath the LORD helped us.”
The stone was not magic. It was a marker — something you could walk past later and remember by. So when the hymn says here I raise mine Ebenezer, it means: I am putting down a marker at this exact spot, so that when I forget, the stone will remember for me. Everything up to here, God did.
The most honest line in the hymn
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it is the most quoted line Robinson wrote, and the most exposed. Prone means inclined toward, liable to, likely to. The singer is not confessing a single failure. He is confessing a direction — that left alone, he drifts, and he knows it about himself.
What makes it remarkable is the next line: prone to leave the God I love. Not the God he resents or doubts. The God he loves. Robinson is admitting that affection alone has never been enough to keep him. That is why the verse ends by asking God to seal the heart — to do the holding, because the heart cannot be trusted to hold itself.
About this recording
The recording above is our own traditional gospel arrangement of Robinson’s public-domain text, produced with AI-assisted music generation. The words are Robinson’s, unchanged. The setting is new — so if you grew up singing NETTLETON, this will sound like the hymn you know wearing different clothes.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does “Here I raise mine Ebenezer” mean in Come Thou Fount?
Ebenezer is Hebrew for “stone of help,” taken from 1 Samuel 7:12, where the prophet Samuel set up a stone to mark a place God had helped Israel. In the hymn, raising an Ebenezer means setting down a marker at a point in your own life and saying: everything up to here, God did.
What does “prone to wander” mean?
Prone means inclined toward or liable to. “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it” is a confession of direction rather than of one failure — the admission that left to himself the singer drifts away, and that he knows this about himself. The following line sharpens it: “prone to leave the God I love.”
Who wrote Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing?
The words were written by Robert Robinson in 1758, when he was twenty-two. Robinson had been converted three years earlier under the preaching of George Whitefield. The melody most people know is a separate tune called NETTLETON, first printed in 1813 in John Wyeth’s Repository of Sacred Music, Part Second; the words and tune were paired later.
Is Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing in the public domain?
Yes. Robinson’s text was published in 1758 and the NETTLETON tune in 1813, both far earlier than the 1930 US public-domain cutoff, so both are free to print, sing and record. One caution: a public-domain hymn can still be wrapped in a copyrighted arrangement. Licence the specific arrangement you are using, not the hymn itself. You can hear our public-domain arrangement here.
What Bible verse is Come Thou Fount based on?
The clearest reference is 1 Samuel 7:12, the source of the Ebenezer line. The hymn also draws on Psalm 36:9 (“with thee is the fountain of life”) for its opening image, and on the parable of the lost sheep in Luke 15 for “Jesus sought me when a stranger.”
How many verses does Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing have?
Robinson’s original had four stanzas. Most hymnals and nearly all modern recordings use three, dropping the stanza that begins “O that day when freed from sinning.” The three-verse version is the one in common use today.
What does “fetter” mean in the hymn?
A fetter is a chain or shackle. The line “let Thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee” asks for God’s goodness to work like a chain — not as punishment, but as the thing that keeps a wandering heart from getting away. It is a deliberately startling image: bind me, because I know myself.
Can I use Come Thou Fount in a church service or recording?
Yes. The 1758 text and the 1813 NETTLETON tune are both public domain, so they may be printed, projected, sung and recorded freely. Check the arrangement you are using, though — a modern choral setting or orchestration can carry its own copyright even when the hymn beneath it does not.
Did Robert Robinson leave the faith he wrote about?
There is a well-known story that Robinson, years later, met a woman humming his hymn and told her he would give anything to feel what he felt when he wrote it. The story is widely repeated but poorly documented, and historians treat it with caution. What is certain is that the man who wrote “prone to wander” knew the tendency first-hand.
