Archive for December 2011
Best Version of “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing”
Robert Robinson’s hymn, “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” is frequently sung in churches around the world each Sunday. This Sunday I again share the privilege of leading congregation worship with this hymn. What most Christians don’t know is that the version in their hymnals is abbreviated. My friend, Andrew Case, pointed me to the original 5-verse hymn in 2008, and I’ve been using it ever since. The lyrics are even more profound in the original, and the hymn just makes more sense. I’m posting this version below for good reference, which you can find on Wikipedia. In my opinion, the best recorded version I have ever heard of this song is by Andrew Case, which you can download at his website here. I enjoyed collaborating with Andrew on this recording, and you can hear me playing the piano in the background.
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.
2. Sorrowing I shall be in spirit,
Till released from flesh and sin,
Yet from what I do inherit,
Here Thy praises I’ll begin;
Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Here by Thy great help I’ve come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.
3. Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood;
How His kindness yet pursues me
Mortal tongue can never tell,
Clothed in flesh, till death shall loose me
I cannot proclaim it well.
4. 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.
5. O that day when freed from sinning,
I shall see Thy lovely face;
Clothèd then in blood washed linen
How I’ll sing Thy sovereign grace;
Come, my Lord, no longer tarry,
Take my ransomed soul away;
Send thine angels now to carry
Me to realms of endless day.
Tip on How to Replace Hyphens with En Dashes in MS Word
Recently I was looking over a paper I had written for a seminary class which conformed to the SBTS Style Manual. This manual is unique to SBTS and is loosely based off of the Chicago Style Manuel (Turabian). But I wanted to submit this paper to a journal, and nearly every biblical studies journal requires SBL Style, also similar to Chicago style but much different from the SBTS style. One difference, for instance, is that SBL style requires en dashes between numerals (Gen 3:14–19) while SBTS style allows for simply hyphens between numbers (Gen 3:14-19). It’s a very small difference, but I guess editors are different people.
So who wants to go through an entire research paper and change all hyphens to en dashes?! I don’t, so after two minutes of googling I found this quick solution for those who use MS Word on a PC or Mac (I happily fall into the latter category):
- Go to “Edit” and click on “Find” or “Find and Replace” (or just Ctrl + “F” or Cmd + “F”)
- Click on the “Replace” tab
- In the “Find what” field type ([0-9])-([0-9])
- In the “Replace with” field type \1–\2 (notice the en dash in between, not a hyphen)
- Select “Use wildcards”
- Click “Replace All”
And there you have it. If you run this script all hyphens between numerals will be replaced with en dashes. If you have hyphens between words they will remain the same. Saved me a bunch of time. Might be helpful for others. Thanks to Phil Gons for the help.
Josh Philpot 