2.22.2024

Faith in Hymn

THERE IS A FOUNTAIN
FILLED WITH BLOOD

William Cowper (pronounced Cooper) is one of God‘s gracious gifts to those suffering from depression. He often turned to Psalm 42:5 for help, “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.”

Cowper reveals to us that our emotional struggles often give us heightened sensitivity to the heart of God.

He was born in 1731. He was the fourth child of a British clergyman and his wife. His three siblings died, then his mother died while giving birth to her fifth child. He was only six years old when he lost his mother. It was a blow that he never got over.

Emotionally frail, he was sent to a boarding school where for two years he was terrorized by a bully which further shattered his nerves. From ages 10 to 12, he had a better experience at the Westminster School, developing a love for literature and poetry. His father wanted him to be an attorney, but the barr exam caused him to experience runaway anxiety.

Concluding himself to be damned, he threw away his Bible and attempted suicide.

He was placed in an asylum run by Dr. Nathaniel Cotton, a committed Christian. Under Dr. Cotton’s care, Willian Cowper slowly recovered. While he was in the asylum, in the year 1764, he found the Lord while reading Romans 3:25, “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;”

Just after that he was saved. Some time later he took a pen and paper, sat down at a table in that asylum, and wrote these words :

“There is a fountain field with blood,
Drawn from Emmanuel’s veins.
And sinners plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains .”

Pastor Bailey
Men’s Text Devotion