There is a fountain filled with blood

There is a fountain filled with blood. William Cowper* (1731-1800). This hymn was first published in Richard Conyers*’s Collection of Psalms and Hymns (1772); it later achieved world-wide popularity. In Book I of Olney Hymns (1779), ‘On select Texts of Scripture’ it was Hymn LXXIX. It had seven stanzas and was headed ‘Praise for the fountain opened’, from Zechariah 13: 1, ‘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.’ The imagery of the first stanza depends on a typological approach to scripture which Cowper himself describes in another hymn, ‘Old Testament Gospel’ (Olney Hymns, Book 1, Hymn CXXXII),...