There Is A Fountain Filled With Blood

William Cowper, born into the home of an English clergy man, educated in private schools and earning a degree in law would come across as a very strong willed, and determined young man. Isn’t that how the story always begins?

There is so much story to the life of William Cowper. To put it all into one small article would not do this man justice, but, I’ll give you my best shot.

Despite the fact that William was very intelligent, and very driven, it was the death of his mother when he was six years old that made him an emotionally fragile, and unstable man beneath the surface of all of his success. It was just before William went to take his final bar examination that his hidden anxieties began to surface. Added to his fear of his bar exam he suffered a failed love affair, and as a result of both; had a mental break down from which he never recovered. This led to an unsuccessful suicide attempt, which then led to the next eighteen months he spent in an insane asylum.

First, I would like to briefly paint a picture on what an insane asylum looked like in the 18th century. It was not a place filled with gentle, loving nurses like Whoopie Goldberg from Girl, Interrupted, nor an exciting mystery such as our most recent box office success: Shutter Island.

These were actually places where it was believed that they were locking away the “animals” of society. Asylums were dark, and dirty dungeons where torture treatments were used such as branding their skulls to “bring them to their senses”, or swinging them around by a harness to “calm their nerves”. William, to my understanding, wasn’t exactly getting the type of treatment he needed at the time.

Despite his depression William found a way to treat himself. It was during this time that he began to bury himself in scripture. Though, as a child he had a spiritual upbringing, it wasn’t until this point that William truly began to wrestle with what it meant to have a true relationship with Christ and with his eternal salvation. He was thirty three when he accepted Christ as his savior.

Though William never practiced law again he did find a love for writing and literature.... you see where I’m going with this....

Through a long and beautiful story made short, William ended up receiving the spiritual nourishment he needed from a Reverend Unwin and his wife Mary. It was through this couple that William met....are you ready for this one? .....John Newton.... author of “Amazing Grace!” The two great minds produced together the “Olney hymns”, a book of over three hundred hymns. Among Cowper’s written work, with the spiritual inspiration of Newton, is the hymn that, to him, testified his final peace with his savior. “There Is a Fountain Filled With Blood”.

And it wasn’t long after he wrote this hymn that William died on April 25 1800. He left this world having lived a full, and glorifying life liberated from so much pain, and sorrow.

“Redeeming love has been my theme, and shall be till I die”