There is a fountain filled with blood

altered as
From Calvary’s cross a fountain flows
There springs a fountain where for sin

with
TUNBRIDGE (CARTHAGE)
FOUNTAIN (COWPER)
ATONEMENT
CLEANSING FOUNTAIN

I. Text: Origins

For much of the life of poet William Cowper (1731–1800, pronounced ‘Cooper’), he struggled with poor mental health. After one difficult bout, necessitating a year and a half in an asylum, 1763 to 1765, he came to the acquaintance of the family of Rev. Morley Unwin in Huntingdon, England, who took him in as a boarder. Just two years later, in 1767, Rev. Unwin was killed in a horse riding accident. At the urging of their mutual friend Richard Conyers, the Rev. John Newton paid a visit to the distressed family. At the time, Newton was curate of the market town of Olney, about 36 miles (58 km) to the west; he invited them to move under his care. Cowper and the Unwins were able to secure a home adjacent to Newton, separated only by an orchard. In the wake of Rev. Unwin’s death, and the death of Cowper’s brother John on 20 March 1770, Newton’s pastoral influence was vital in encouraging Cowper to apply his talents toward writing hymns. He wrote most of his best hymns in this period before relapsing into a deep depression in 1773.

One of his most enduring hymns, “There is a fountain filled with blood” was first published in Richard Conyers’ Collection of Psalms and Hymns (London: Clement Watts, 1772 | Fig. 1), in seven stanzas of four lines, without music, unattributed.

The hymn was also given in Olney Hymns (1779 | Fig. 2), without change, except there it was headed “Praise for the fountain opened. [Zechariah] Chap. xiii. 1.” The mark of “C.” next to the title was an indication of Cowper’s authorship (versus Newton’s). The Scripture upon which the hymn is based says, “In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness” (KJV).

II. Text: Analysis

The original Scripture text (Zech. 13:1) does not mention blood, nor does it directly equate the fountain with a person (the Messiah), but it does say the fountain will be for the cleansing of sin, so Cowper has appropriately projected a New Testament idea onto this Old Testament text. The concept of cleansing blood is found in Revelation 1:5, where it says Christ has “washed us from our sins in his own blood,” and Revelation 7:14, which says those who have come through the Great Tribulation “have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

Stanza 2 mentions the crucified thief of Luke 23:32–43 (also Matthew 27:38, Mark 15:27). Stanza 3 refers to Christ as the Lamb, a name introduced by John the Baptist in John 1:29,36. Stanza 4 describes a redeeming blood, such as in 1 Peter 1:18–19, “Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, . . . But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.” Relating to stanza 5, the book of Isaiah mentions a stammering tongue three times, the most relevant being the prophecy in 32:4, “The heart also of the rash shall understand knowledge, and the tongue of the stammerers shall be ready to speak plainly.” More broadly, stanzas 5 to 7 direct the worshiper to heavenly realms. A modern worshiper might not see a golden harp (see Rev. 14:1–3) as a particularly desirable or aspirational reward, but notice the more profound purpose at the conclusion: “To sound in God the Father’s ears / No other name but thine.” Modern congregations miss out, perhaps, by typically omitting that declaration.

Some critics have found the opening lines to be too grotesque for public worship. A few notable attempts at revision are presented below. One of the strongest defenses of Cowper’s text was given by Ray Palmer in the nineteenth century:

This has been pronounced, by some, gross and repulsive in its conception and language, or to say the very least, highly objectionable in point of taste. Such criticism seems to us superficial. It takes the words as if they were intended to be a literal prosaic statement. It forgets that what they express is not only poetry, but the poetry of intense and impassioned feeling, which naturally embodies itself in the boldest metaphors. The inner sense of the soul, when its deepest affections are moved, infallibly takes metaphors in their true significance, while a cold critic of the letter misses that significance entirely. He merely demonstrates his own lack of the spiritual sympathies of which, for fervent Christian hearts, the hymn referred to is an admirable expression.[1]

Elizabeth Cosnett has helpfully noted a broader context for the type of imagery used by Cowper:

Isaac Watts and others had already used “fountain of blood” imagery in hymnody. There were also late medieval paintings of the crucifixion with strong eucharistic overtones, in which Christ’s blood was shown being caught by angels in a chalice or falling into a large pool in which people immersed themselves. The idea conveyed to contemporaries was not of gruesome amounts of blood but of boundless mercy.[2]

III. Text: Adaptations

1. John Rippon

Cowper’s text has often been changed, sometimes in small ways, sometimes extensively. Some hymnals use a minor change in the second stanza, reading:

And there may I, though vile as he,
Wash all my sins away.

This small revision dates to John Rippon’s Selection of Hymns (1787 | Fig. 3), except his alteration was:

O may I there, tho’ vile as he,
Wash all my sins away!

The more common form (“And there may I”) emerged as a frequent alteration in the early 1800s. This difference, though small, changes the circumstances from something the writer has already done (“have / washed”) to something less certain (“may / wash”) or perhaps something ongoing (Eucharist/Communion). Arguably, because the writer has already been washed, he can therefore rejoice in his salvation. The fourth stanza especially sees this as an act already performed, in faith.

Rippon, having reduced the hymn to five stanzas, also introduced an inversion of lines to avoid ending the hymn with lying in the grave:

But when this lisping stammering tongue
Lies silent in the grave,
Then in a nobler, sweeter song
I’ll sing thy power to save.

2. James Montgomery

James Montgomery (1771–1854), a capable poet in his own right, edited the 8th edition of Thomas Cotterill’s Selection of Psalms and Hymns (1819 | Fig. 4). In this collection, he included a significant rewriting of Cowper’s text, beginning “From Calvary’s cross a fountain flows / Of water and of blood.” Here, just in the first stanza, he has introduced multiple biblical images, including the water and blood at the cross (John 19:34), the pool at Bethesda (John 5:2), and the pool at Siloam (John 9:7). In the second stanza, as with Rippon, Montgomery changed the tense from past to present, but he also changed the viewpoint from first person to third, losing the testimonial aspect. His third stanza omits the personal address to Christ (“Dear dying Lamb”) and instead ties the language more closely to the fountain in the first stanza. The fourth and fifth stanzas are largely new, only carrying over the notion of death, reframed here as death to sin, and singing in eternity.

In a conversation with his friend John Holland on 20 July 1824, later recorded in his memoirs, Montgomery offered a glimpse into his intent behind this alteration:

Good Mr. Cotterill and I bestowed a great deal of labour and care on the compilation of that book; clipping, interlining, and remodelling hymns of all sorts, as we thought we could correct the sentiment or improve the expression. . . . We have so altered some of Cowper’s that the poet would hardly know them in their present form. For example, I entirely rewrote the first verse of that favourite hymn, commencing “There is a fountain filled with blood,” &c. The words are objectionable as representing a fountain being filled instead of springing up: I think my version is unexceptionable.[3]

As a work of poetry, Montgomery’s text is a skilled composition, and it merits being sung, but its actual use has been very limited. In his Christian Psalmody (1834), Edward Bickersteth included Montgomery’s first stanza and a revision of the second but otherwise kept the rest of Cowper’s text. A few other collections in the mid nineteenth century mixed Montgomery with Cowper, but the end result has been an overwhelming preference for Cowper. Eminent hymnologist John Julian was not a fan of Montgomery’s revisions:

In these alterations of the text the sustained confidence and rapture of Cowper are entirely lost. This may suit public taste, but it gives an entirely false view of the state of Cowper’s mind when he wrote this hymn. Our positive knowledge of the poet’s frequent depression of spirits and despair is painful enough without this gratuitous and false addition thereto.[4]

3. Nathaniel Micklem

In the twentieth century, another attempt was made at promoting a revision of Cowper. Hymnologist Erik Routley, in his scholarly, annotated compilation A Panorama of Christian Hymnody (1979), put forward his recommendation for a revision by his mentor Nathaniel Micklem (1888–1976):

There springs a fountain, where for sin
Immanuel was slain,
And sinners who are washed therein
Are cleansed from every stain.

Micklem’s revision was much less extensive than Montgomery’s, the only other change happening in the first two lines of stanza 3:

Thy resurrection and thy blood
Shall never lose their power.

And yet for these six new lines, Routley offered a lengthy rationale for their necessity:

It is the most difficult case in all hymnodic criticism. In its original version, . . . it has secured the affection of many devoted disciples and earned the execration of as many people who find it crudely revolting. Often because it is worth inviting a reader to suspend his frown or his instinct to reject it in order that a true message may come through, which if it were altered would be smothered. It is not so here.

The passage behind this opening stanza is . . . Zechariah 13:1. Cowper’s intention is to identify this, through an accepted form of typology, with the blood of Christ shed on the Cross. Were it not that a later English poet whose gifts I should not place much below Cowper’s has produced an amendment that reflects the original Scripture more faithfully (in the word ‘for sin’) and that introduces the majesty and pathos of the Atonement with no less sureness and without the graceless literalism into which the usually sensitive Cowper was betrayed, I could not pursue this argument, though I should still have included the hymn.

But my reasons go beyond this. For one thing, this amendment is at present wholly unknown to editors, and therefore nowadays the hymn appears only in those collections which do not make much allowance for the antipathetic reaction I have mentioned; for another, when the hymn is printed it often ends at stanza 5, or much worse, is further abridged and presented with a spurious chorus (and, to crown it all, a shockingly complacent and jaunty tune), so that contemporary associations with it are further corrupted. . . . It is inexcusable also, by omitting the last eight lines, to make the hymn more depressing than Cowper meant it to be, or by treating it as some hymnals do, to make it more casual and commonplace than Cowper could have ever conceived it to be. As we have it here [in the revision by Micklem], it is something which no serious reader can lightly dismiss.[5]

Micklem’s text was included Rejoice in the Lord (1985), a hymnal Routley edited, and in Lutheran Worship (1982), otherwise it has not been taken up by other collections.

In the end, James Moffatt’s polemical statement has proven to be true:

Few hymns have aroused keener controversy, owing in the main to the imagery of the first verse, which is a Christian expansion or application of Zechariah 13:1. Attempts have been made to improve it, but they have proved disastrous failures, not excepting James Montgomery’s version. The hymn must be taken as Cowper wrote it, or not at all.[6]

IV. Tunes

1. TUNBRIDGE / CARTHAGE

Cowper’s text was first set to music in the March 1779 issue of The Gospel Magazine (Fig. 5), using a tune known in other collections either as CARTHAGE or TUNBRIDGE (not to be confused with other tunes of the same name). The author is unknown. This pairing was initially very successful, included in 62 tune books up to 1820, but it has since fallen out of use.

2. COWPER / ATONEMENT / CLEANSING FOUNTAIN

In the United States, composer Lowell Mason (1792–1872) produced a setting for his collection Spiritual Songs No. 1 (1831), co-edited by Thomas Hastings, one of four booklets later combined as Spiritual Songs for Social Worship (1832 | Fig. 6). In this original printing, the tune was unattributed, but it was credited to Mason in other collections (never to Hastings). Here it was called FOUNTAIN; in other collections it has been more commonly called COWPER. The date of composition is often cited as 1830; this could not be verified by the present editor.

Mason’s original tune was only five phrases, with the final phrase being a repeat of the last line of text. In later collections, starting with The Sacred Harp (1834 | 1835 ed. shown at Fig. 7), he added a secondary ending, intended to be sung only at the end of the third and fifth stanzas, in place of the usual fifth phrase.

At the dawn of the nineteenth century, the campmeeting revival movement included the innovation of adding refrains to hymns (for early examples, see “Come, ye sinners, poor and wretched”). Another particularly fruitful period for campmeeting refrains came in the late 1850s and the 1860s, with important additions to the repertoire such as “At the cross, at the cross, where I first saw the light,” and “O how I love Jesus.” Cowper’s text and Mason’s tune received similar treatment.

In 1859, Cowper’s text appeared three times in the collection Devotional Melodies, edited by A.S. Jenks, each time with a different tune and refrain. The first (p. 24) had a refrain starting “I will believe, I do believe that Jesus died for me,” the second (p. 101) had a refrain starting “There’s power in Jesus’ blood,” and the third (p. 179 | Fig. 8), using a minor tune called ATONEMENT, had a refrain built as an extension of the text, like this:

There is a fountain fill’d with blood
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins,
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains.

Lose all their guilty stains,
Lose all their guilty stains,
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains.

Jenks did not credit the source of this tune, but in his preface he indicated some tunes were “old popular airs worthy of being preserved from oblivion,” and others were reclaimed from being used “for secular or sensual purposes.” The ATONEMENT tune was repeated in a similarly titled collection, The Devotional Hymn and Tune Book (NY: U.D. Ward, 1864 | Fig. 9), edited by William Bradbury, using the same refrain structure, minus the harmonically raised sevenths, and reconfigured in triple meter.

In 1865, the convergence of these traditions appeared in the appendix to Hallowed Songs (NY: Carlton & Porter, 1865 | Fig. 10). In this collection, Cowper’s text was set to a tune slightly modified from Mason, extended to eight phrases, dubbed CLEANSING FOUNTAIN. Curiously, the tune was credited to Devotional Melodies, even though this melody did not appear there; the credit would certainly apply, however, to the structure of the refrain.

Also worth noting, Mason’s original tune, FOUNTAIN, appeared in the same collection on page 88, credited to him. CLEANSING FOUNTAIN is best credited as a tune by Lowell Mason, adapted, with an anonymous campmeeting refrain. CLEANSING FOUNTAIN has far surpassed Mason’s original FOUNTAIN in terms of popularity, but his early version of the tune from 1831 continued to be printed through most of the twentieth century.

by CHRIS FENNER
for Hymnology Archive
6 March 2020

Footnotes:

1. Ray Palmer, Voices of Hope and Gladness (London: James Nisbet & Co., 1880), pp. 97-98: Archive.org

2. Elizabeth Cosnett, “There is a fountain filled with blood,” Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology: http://www.hymnology.co.uk/t/there-is-a-fountain-filled-with-blood

3. John Holland & James Everett, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of James Montgomery, vol. 4 (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1855), pp. 69–70: Archive.org

4. John Julian, “There is a fountain filled with blood,” A Dictionary of Hymnology (London: J. Murray, 1892), pp. 1160–1161.

5. Erik Routley, A Panorama of Christian Hymnody (Chicago: GIA, 1979), p. 38.

6. James Moffatt, “There is a fountain filled with blood,” Handbook to the Church Hymnary, with Supplement (Oxford: University Press, 1935), pp. 234–235.

Related Resources:

John Julian, “There is a fountain filled with blood,” A Dictionary of Hymnology (London: J. Murray, 1892), pp. 1160–1161: Google Books

James Moffatt, “There is a fountain filled with blood,” Handbook to the Church Hymnary, with Supplement (Oxford: University Press, 1935), pp. 234–235.

Robert G. McCutchan, “There is a fountain filled with blood,” Our Hymnody, 2nd ed. (Nashville: Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1942), pp. 174–175.

William J. Reynolds, “There is a fountain filled with blood,” Companion to Baptist Hymnal (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1976), pp. 218–219.

Erik Routley, Panorama of Christian Hymnody (Chicago: GIA, 1979), pp. 38, 40.

Fred L. Precht, “There stands a fountain where for sin,” Lutheran Worship Hymnal Companion (St. Louis: Concordia, 1992), p. 512.

Robert Cotterill, “There is a fountain filled with blood,” Wordwise Hymns (23 March 2012):
https://wordwisehymns.com/2012/03/23/there-is-a-fountain-filled-with-blood/

C. Michael Hawn, “There is a fountain filled with blood,” Sing with Understanding, 3rd. ed. (Chicago: GIA, 2002), pp. 364–366.

“There is a fountain filled with blood,” Hymnary.org:
https://hymnary.org/text/there_is_a_fountain_filled_with_blood_dr

Elizabeth Cosnett, “There is a fountain filled with blood,” Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology: http://www.hymnology.co.uk/t/there-is-a-fountain-filled-with-blood