William Cowper

From: Echoes of Grace: 1948

• 1 min. read • grade level: 6

Leaving Westminster School "with no more religion than the satchel on his back,” broken down in fortune and depressed in mind, Cowper arrived in the old city of St. Albans. Here the "sense of guilt and the burden of unpardoned sin" laid hold on him.

In this state he opened a Bible, and the first verse he read was this: "Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood." Rom. 3:25²⁵Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; (Romans 3:25).

"Immediately," he says, "I saw the sufficiency of the atonement Christ had made, my pardon sealed in His blood. In a moment I believed and received the Gospel.”

Thus the author of the following hymn was saved:

There is a stream of precious blood

Which flowed from Jesus' veins;

And sinners washed in that blest flood

Lose all their guilty stains.

The dying thief rejoiced to see

That Savior in his day;

And by that blood, though vile as he,

Our sins are washed away.

Blest Lamb of God, Thy precious blood

Shall never lose its power,

Till every ransomed saint of God