O THOU FOUNT OF EVERY BLESSING

Robinson had always been prone to wander. Apprenticed to a barber at fourteen, he spent more time reading and playing with friends than cutting hair. He became the leader of a notorious gang, and he shamed his family so much that they practically disowned him. Then, still a teen, he went to a George Whitefield meeting, intending to ridicule it; instead, he almost fell asleep in it. But then the preacher shouted out a Bible verse: "0 generation of vipers; who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come" (Matthew 3:7, Kjv). That evening Robinson was con­verted. After his apprenticeship was over, Robinson went into the minis­try. He wrote this hymn at the age of twenty-three as he served at the Calvinistic Methodist Church in Norfolk, England. Late in life, Robinson did stray from the faith and drifted far from the Fount of every blessing. One day he was riding in a stagecoach and sit­ting by a woman who was reading a hymnbook. She showed him the hymn, "Thou Fount of Every Blessing," saying how wonderful it was. He repeatedly tried to change the subject but couldn't. Finally he said, "Madam, I am the poor man who wrote that hymn many years ago, and 1 would give a thousand worlds to enjoy the feelings I had then."

SOFTLY AND TENDERLY JESUS IS CALLING

Will Thompson was called the "Bard of Ohio." Leaving his home in East Liverpool, Ohio, he went to New York City to sell some of the secular songs he had written. Music dealers picked them up, and soon people across the country were singing "My Home on the Old Ohio" and "Gathering Shells from the Seashore." He made so much money from his compositions that newspapers called him "the millionaire song-writer."

But Thompson was a Christian, and he soon began concentrating on hymn writing. After he set up his own firm for publishing hymnals, he sold two million copies of his gospel-quartet books. Sometime around 1880, when Thompson was thirty-three years old, he wrote this invita­tion hymn, "Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling."  This was his all time favorite hymn he wrote.

Recognizing that many people in the smaller towns of America would never hear this hymn, "the million­aire songwriter" loaded an upright piano on a two-horse wagon and drove into the Ohio countryside to sing his gospel songs in the hamlets and villages of his state.

"Come home, come home, ye who are weary, come home." The invi­tation still stands.

TRUST AND OBEY                                             

The order we pick up items in a grocery store doesn't really matter. But " order is important when it comes to our Christian faith. Our obedience will never save us, nor will it enable us to trust. Instead, our vain attempts at obedience will bring only frustration. But when trust comes first, obedience follows out of love.

This song was written after a Dwight L. Moody evangelistic meeting in Brockton, Massachusetts. Daniel Towner was the song leader that night in 1886, and he asked the people to share how they had been saved. Sev­eral stood and spoke of how certain they felt of their salvation. But then a young man rose and said, "I am not quite sure, but I am going to trust, and I am going to obey."

Towner couldn't forget that testimony. He jotted it down and sent it to John Sammis, who had recently left a career in business to enter the ministry. Towner asked Sammis to write a hymn text on trusting and obeying. Sammis wrote the chorus first and then the five stanzas. Later, Towner supplied the tune. To be happy in Jesus, we need to trust first, and then obey.

PASS ME NOT, 0 GENTLE SAVIOR

Cincinnati businessman William Doane liked to write gospel music, so he searched out Fanny Crosby, who could write words to a song at the drop of a hat. Despite her blindness, she already had a reputation, and Doane wanted to see if they could work together on some songs. He was surprised when he found her living in a dilapidated tenement in Manhattan's lower west side.

A few days later, he returned and asked her to write lyrics for a song that would begin, "Pass me not, O gentle Savior." He didn't have a tune yet, and he didn't have any ideas for more words.

Fanny Crosby usually came up with hymn lyrics quite quickly, but this stumped her for several weeks. Then one day she went, as she did regularly, to speak at services in a prison near her tenement. The room was full of angry criminals as Fanny began to speak. Then she heard one prisoner cry out, "Good Lord! Do not pass me by!" These men were now forgotten by society, but this man didn't want to be forgotten by God.

With that in mind, Fanny went home, and wrote the hymn, and sent it to William Doane for the music. It was the first hymn on which they collab­orated. After that, they worked together on many more.

MY JESUS I LOVE YOU  ( a lesson on keeping it simple)

Sixteen-year-old William Featherston of Montreal wrote this simple hymn shortly after his conversion in 1862. He died before his twenty-seventh birthday, and this is apparently the only hymn he wrote.

Young Featherston sent the poem to his aunt in Los Angeles, who then sent it to England, where it appeared in The London Hymnbook  in 1864. Back in Boston, Massachusetts, a Baptist minister, A. J. Gordon, was preparing a hymnal for Baptist congregations when he saw "My Jesus, I Love Thee" in the British hymnal. It was a simple idea, but the music was extremely difficult to learn and even harder to sing.

A.J. Gordon he later wrote that "in a moment of inspiration, a beautiful new air sang itself to me." The simple tune he wrote perfectly complemented the simple words, and soon the hymn was being sung across America.

A. J. Gordon had a remarkable ministry in New England. He wrote several books and started a college and seminary. But putting music to this hymn written by a teenage boy may be the accomplishment in A. J. Gordon's life that has touched the most lives of all.