Have you ever heard someone complain about all the talk about the blood of Jesus, even to the point of ridiculing “that old-fashioned bloody religion”? Sadly that indicates the person has never understood the biblical message of salvation. Blood is vital to the history of redemption in the Bible and is central to the explanation of the reason that Jesus died. What is the primary symbol of Christianity? It is the cross where Jesus shed His blood. What was the central act of worship in the Old Testament? It was the shedding of the blood of sacrifices as substitutes for sinful people. What is the sacrament that points to our spiritual nourishment? It is the Lord’s Supper where we celebrate His blood that was shed for the remission of our sins. So is blood something that we should remove from the message we preach? Do we need a Christianity sanitized from all reference to blood? God forbid!
First, consider these Scriptures.
- Leviticus 17:11 – It is the blood that makes atonement.
- Mark 14:24 – This is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many.
- John 6:53 – Jesus said, unless you drink (My) blood, you have no life in you.
- Acts 20:28 – The church of God which He obtained with His own blood.
- Romans 5:9 – We have now been justified by His blood.
- Ephesians 1:7 – We have redemption through His blood.
- Ephesians 2:13 – You who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
- Hebrews 9:12-14 – The blood of Christ will purify our conscience.
- Hebrews 9:22 – Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.
- Hebrews 13:12 – Jesus suffered to sanctify the people through His own blood.
- 1 John 1:7 – the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.
- Revelation 1:5 – Jesus Christ has freed us from our sins by His blood.
- Revelation 12:11- They have conquered by the blood of the Lamb.
Second, consider these hymns.
- Alas, and Did My Savior Bleed
- Arise, My Soul, Arise
- Christ Our Hope in Life and Death
- Come, Ye Sinners, Poor and Wretched
- He Will Hold Me Fast
- In Christ Alone
- Jesus, Thy Blood and Righteousness
- Just As I Am
- Let Us Love and Sing and Wonder
- Marvelous Grace of Our Loving Lord
- Nothing But the Blood
- O for a Thousand Tongues
- Redeemed, How I Love to Proclaim It
- There Is Power in the Blood
- Victory in Jesus
Now we’re ready to look at one of the greatest of those hymns about the blood of Jesus, “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood,” written in 1771 by William Cowper (pronounced Cooper) who lived from 1731 to 1800. He was the son of an Anglican minister who was chaplain to King George III. His mother, who was a descendant of the great English poet John Donne, died when he was only six years old and this left a life-long scar of grief on his heart. At the age of ten he was sent to a boarding school where he struggled with the cruelty of the older boys there.
By the age of eighteen, he had embarked on the study of law. But his lack of self-confidence kept him from achieving much success, and after nine years he had an opportunity for a clerkship in the House of Lords. But by this time, severe depression had become such a major challenge that it led him to several attempts at suicide. Failing even in that, along with two unhappy love relationships, one with a cousin in which his father intervened to forbid further contact with her, he wound up being confined for a brief period in St. Alban’s Asylum.
It was during that time that he wrote the hymn “There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood.” A visiting relative sought to ease the sick man’s depression by telling him of Jesus’ power to save. Cowper burst into tears saying, “It is the first time that I have seen a ray of hope.” When the friend had gone the poet opened his Bible at random, and in the providence of God, his eyes fell on these words about Jesus in Romans 3:25. “Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood.”
This scriptural account of Christ’s redeeming work touched Cowper’s heart, causing him later to testify thus: “There shone upon me the full beams of the sufficiency of the atonement that Christ has made; my pardon in His blood; the fulness and completeness of my justification and, in a moment, I believed and received the gospel.”
So thrilled was he by his new-found hope that he described it in verse, basing it on these words in Zechariah 13:1, “In that day there shall be a fountain opened up for sin and uncleanness.” When we sing the hymn, we may be tempted to think of a multi-layered fountain in a landscaped garden. But this fountain is an ever-flowing stream of soul-cleansing blood from the Savior’s veins, almost like a spring gushing out of the side of a barren mountain.
There is a fountain filled with blood,
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stain.
Cowper said the next years came with a “full realisation of God’s favour” and were the happiest, most lucid years of his life. It was during this time that he wrote his most famous secular poem, “The Task,” which received much acclaim. He was so overwhelmed by God’s “overruling providence” for him to live that he was led to write his famous hymn on God’s providence, “God Moves in a Mysterious Way.”
Cowper’s feelings of despair never left him entirely, but he had enough clarity of thought to be able to write amazing poetry. And this hymn was included in the “Olney Hymnbook” that he and John Newton composed for the church where Newton was pastor. Cowper had moved to that village to be near Newton, who was a source of stability and strength for this poor struggling soul.
It was William Cowper’s great hope that other troubled souls would be helped by his hymns. And indeed they have been! The great “Prince of preachers,” Charles Haddon Spurgeon was so taken with the words of this hymn that instructions were given for some of the lines to be inscribed on his tomb. To this day visitors to the Spurgeon grave at Norwood cemetery, South London, can read:
E’re since by faith I saw the stream
Thy flowing wounds supply
Redeeming love has been my theme,
And shall be till I die.
But darkness enveloped Cowper once more after the death of his beloved nurse and friend Mary Unwin. It plunged him into such a state that he never fully recovered. Her death brought on the writing of another poem called “The Castaway” which was his last. He was seized with dropsy in the spring of 1800 and died. One who saw him after death remarked that with the “composure and calmness” of the face there “mingled, as it were, a holy surprise.”
He is buried in the chapel of St. Thomas Canterbury where a stained glass window commemorates his life. In his childhood church of St. Peter’s there are also two windows in memory of him with an inscription taken from one of his poems: “Salvation to the dying man, and to the rising God.”
How true that is of William Cowper’s struggle toward grace through his poetry and treasured hymns. His repeated mental breakdowns produced a lisp and stutter that he lived with for the rest of his life, which make the closing words of this hymn all the more precious.
When this poor lisping, stamm’ring tongue
Lies silent in the grave,
Then in a nobler, sweeter song
I’ll sing Thy pow’r to save!
As is true of the best hymns, every line is based on clear biblical teaching.
In stanza 1, we sing of a fountain filled with blood.
Blood has always been necessary for the remission of sins: Hebrews 9:22.
The blood of this fountain was drawn from Immanuel’s veins: Matthew 1:23.
Those who plunge beneath its flood lose all their guilty stains because redemption is available through Christ’s blood: Ephesians 1:7.
There is a fountain filled with blood,
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins,
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains.
In stanza 2, we sing that this fountain washes away sin.
As Jesus had the power to pardon the thief, He has the power to pardon us too: Luke 23:39-43.
We may not be thieves, but all of us at one time or another were as vile as he when we were lost because of sin: Romans 3:23.
However, because of the blood that Jesus shed, all our sins can be washed away: Acts 22:16.
The dying thief rejoiced to see
That fountain in His day;
And there have I, though vile as he,
Washed all my sins away.
In stanza 3, we sing that this fountain provides power for us to be saved.
Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God whose blood provides redemption: 1 Peter 1:18-19.
Its power is made available to us in the gospel: Romans 1:16.
The time is coming when there will be no more sin, affirming that until then the grace of God that brings salvation will continue to be available to all who trust in Christ: Titus 2:11.
Dear dying Lamb, Thy precious blood
Shall never lose its pow’r,
Till all the ransomed church of God
Are safe, to sin no more.
In stanza 4, we sing that this fountain symbolizes God’s redeeming love.
It is by faith that we see this stream and through it can be justified before God: Romans 5:1.
The stream and its benefits are the results of God’s redeeming love in sending Jesus: John 3:16.
So our theme, even until we die, should be Jesus Christ and Him crucified: 1 Corinthians 2:2.
E’er since by faith I saw the stream
Thy flowing wounds supply,
Redeeming love has been my theme,
And shall be till I die.
In stanza 5, we sing that this fountain enables us to obtain a home in heaven.
It is only after death that our song will be completely transformed: Hebrews 9:27.
The Bible clearly teaches that the soul continues to exist after death: Ecclesiastes 12:7.
The great hope that the blood of Jesus Christ makes possible is that even though our lisping, stammering tongues are lying silent in the grave, someday Jesus will return to raise our vile bodies and make them like His glorious body: Philippians 3:20-21.
When this poor, lisping, stamm’ring tongue
Lies silent in the grave,
Then in a nobler, sweeter song,
I’ll sing Thy pow’r to save.
The two couplets of this stanza are often reversed from the order in which Cowper set them. This has been done to end with a more joyful conclusion … first the silence of the grave, and then the sweeter song.
There are two additional stanzas which are not found in hymnals today.
Lord, I believe Thou hast prepared,
unworthy though I be,
For me a blood-bought free reward,
a golden harp for me!
’Tis strung and tuned for endless years,
and formed by power divine,
To sound in God the Father’s ears
No other name but Thine.
The story is told concerning a young Scottish man, suffering from mouth cancer, whose only hope of recovery was the removal of his tongue. The surgeon asked him, since he would never be able to speak again, if there was anything that he wished to say. A firm Bible believer, he began singing this hymn, and by the time he finished there was not a dry eye in the operating room. Unfortunately, he never regained consciousness from the operation, and thus his last words on earth had been:
Then in a nobler, sweeter song, I’ll sing Thy power to save,
When this poor lisping, stammering tongue Lies silent in the grave.
Yes, Christ’s redeeming love, as shown through the blood that He shed on Calvary, can be our theme both here and in that nobler, sweeter song book, because “There Is A Fountain.”
The tune (FOUNTAIN or COWPER) is believed to be a traditional American western folk melody, characteristic of the frontier camp meeting songs of the 18th and 19th centuries. It is often attributed to Lowell Mason (1792-1872). During the early part of the 1800’s, Mason was always looking for poems to set to music for his hymnbooks. Among his selections was Cowper’s “There Is A Fountain.” Mason had probably heard the camp meeting song and arranged it for this text in 1830. Cowper was recognized as the greatest poet of his day and even now is considered the most honored English poet between Alexander Pope and Percy Shelley. Yet, he is equally remembered for his wonderful hymns.
Here is a performance of the song, performed in a way that suggests the traditional camp meeting sound that was the model for Mason’s music.