Break thou the bread of life

with
BETHSAIDA
BREAD OF LIFE

I. Origins

On 4 August 1874, John H. Vincent, secretary of the Methodist Sunday School Union, and Lewis H. Miller officially launched an educational retreat center on the shore of Lake Chautauqua, New York, for the initial purpose of training Sunday School teachers. It was originally called the Chautauqua Lake Sunday School Assembly, and it continues to operate in the present day as the Chautauqua Institution. In 1877, Mary Artemisia Lathbury (1841–1913), a lifelong Methodist and daughter of a Methodist minister, was Vincent’s assistant editor for The Sunday School Journal and was involved with camp operations when they came up with the idea of writing hymns for the camp. Lathbury had already developed a reputation as a writer and illustrator; the previous year, she published Fleda and the Voice, with Other Stories (NY: Nelson & Phillips, 1876). For the Bible studies of the Normal Classes (teacher education), she wrote these words, “Break thou the bread of life.” William Fisk Sherwin (1826–1888), music director of the Assembly and an editor for Biglow & Main, set it to music. The hymn was included in a small, pamphlet-bound collection, The Chautauqua Carols for the Use of the Chautauqua Sunday-School Assembly (1877), then published more broadly in a larger collection with a similar name, Chautauqua Carols: A Collection of Favorite Songs Suitable for All Sunday School Services (Chicago: Biglow & Main, 1878 | Fig. 1).

Lathbury is sometimes known as the “Poet Laureate of Chautauqua,” and her hymns became a fixture of the Chautauqua Literary and Scientific Circle.

II. Development

Lathbury’s original text consisted of only two stanzas. Many hymnals have incorporated two additional stanzas written by Alexander Groves (1842–1909) and first published in The Methodist Hymn-Book (London: Wesleyan Conference, 1904 | Fig. 2), uncredited. Groves was an accountant with Henley Savings Bank and organist for the Henley Wesleyan Chapel in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, England. In the 1904 hymnal, this text was set to a new tune by Rosalind F. Bridge (1884–1966) called BETHSAIDA, shown here in Tonic Sol-Fa notation.

Many sources report Groves’ text as having also appeared in the Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, September 1913. Rosalind’s father, Frederick Bridge, edited the music edition of the hymnal where her tune first appeared (Fig. 2). In 1907, she married Dr. Edward Stainer, son of John Stainer.

A modern revision of this hymn was made by the editors of the Lutheran Book of Worship (1978), beginning “Break now the bread of life.” This version mainly served to update the archaic language of the original.

III. Analysis

The first stanza of Lathbury’s text speaks of Jesus feeding the five thousand by the sea of Galilee (Mt. 14:15–21, Mk. 6:35–44, Lk. 9:12–17, Jn. 6:1–15), especially as it is told in John, with the application in 6:22–59, where Jesus described a “food that endures to eternal life,” and he himself was the “bread of life.” Lathbury connected this episode with Jesus’ status as the living, incarnate Word (Jn. 1:1,14).

The second stanza describes a release from bondage. In John 8:31–32, Jesus said, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (ESV). The phrase “all in all” comes from 1 Corinthians 15:28 and Ephesians 1:23. The first additional stanza by Groves is a prayer of application, asking to be a part of that eternal sustenance. The final stanza appeals to the third person of the Trinity, asking for the Holy Spirit to reveal the depths of the Scriptures. The third and fourth lines allude to the healing of the blind in John 9 and Matthew 20:29–34. The last four lines speak of the Spirit as the interpreter of the Word (1 Cor. 2:12–13).

Some commentators, including Albert Bailey, have associated this hymn with Communion because of the breaking bread language in the first line and Jesus’ explication in John 6, but as Donald Hustad and others have noted, the actual hymn text has a different focus:

Bailey undoubtedly associates these phrases with Jesus’ words at the Upper Room supper (Mark 14:22,24): “This is my body, which is for you,” and “This is my blood of the covenant.” . . . However, this hymn’s meaning is more closely associated with the opening words of the first chapter of John, in which Jesus is presented as the dynamic wisdom and mind of God—the logos, or living Word of God. . . . The hymn’s central emphasis is the prayer that the Holy Spirit will show us “the truth concealed” in the Bible. When that happens, the the bread of life is “broken” so that it may be consumed.[1]

Albert Edward Bailey, after trying to compare the text to Catholic and Anglican Communion theology, did acknowledge the hymn’s basic message:

It merely suggests that Jesus has something to offer us for the nourishing of our spiritual lives. That something comes to us first as words from the sacred page, but the true “Word” that really does the nourishing is the ever-living Christ himself, whom we contact by the by the outreach of our soul toward him.[2]

Carl Daw felt the additional stanzas by Groves “did little to enlarge the scope of the hymn.”[3]

The hymn is best used as a prayer for illumination before a sermon, or in preparation for a Bible study.

The tune by Sherwin has been very successful. The phrases rise gradually to a climax on the upper tonic in the fourth phrase before moving back in chordal leaps down to the lower tonic. Carl Daw remarked, “The melody uses all notes of its octave scale, though it never uses melisma but sets each syllable to a note. The rhythmic patterns are very consistent, so that phrases A and C share a pattern, as do B and D.”[4]

by CHRIS FENNER
for Hymnology Archive
16 March 2021

Footnotes:

1. Donald P. Hustad, “An interpretation: Break now the bread of life,” The Hymn, vol. 36, no. 3 (July 1985), p. 27: HathiTrust

2. Albert Edward Bailey, “Break thou the bread of life,” The Gospel in Hymns (1950), p. 506.

3. Carl P. Daw Jr., “Break thou the bread of life,” Glory to God: A Companion (2016), p. 465.

4. Carl P. Daw Jr., “Break thou the bread of life,” Glory to God: A Companion (2016), p. 465.

Related Resources:

H. Augustine Smith, “The Poet Laureate of Chautauqua,” Lyric Religion: The Romance of Immortal Hymns (NY: D. Appleton–Century Co., 1931), pp. 49–51.

John Telford, “Break thou the bread of life,” The Methodist Hymn-Book Illustrated (London: Epworth, 1934), pp. 168–169.

Albert Edward Bailey, “Break thou the bread of life,” The Gospel in Hymns (NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1950), p. 506.

E.E. Ryden, “The Lyricist of Chautauqua,” The Story of Christian Hymnody (Rock Island, IL: Augustana Press, 1959), pp. 583–585.

Marilyn K. Stulken, “Break now the bread of life,” Hymnal Companion to the Lutheran Book of Worship (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981), pp. 312–313.

Donald P. Hustad, “An interpretation: Break now the bread of life,” The Hymn, vol. 36, no. 3 (July 1985), p. 27: HathiTrust

Richard Watson & Kenneth Trickett, “Break thou the bread of life,” Companion to Hymns & Psalms (Peterborough: Methodist Publishing, 1988), p. 283.

William J. Reynolds, “Break thou the bread of life,” Handbook to the Baptist Hymnal (Nashville: Convention Press, 1992), p. 102.

Carlton Young, “Break thou the bread of life,” Companion to the United Methodist Hymnal (Nashville: Abingdon, 1993), pp. 246–247.

Edward Darling & Donald Davison, “Break thou the bread of life,” Companion to Church Hymnal (Dublin: Columba, 2005), pp. 521–522.

Paul Westermeyer, “Break now the bread of life,” Hymnal Companion to Evangelical Lutheran Worship (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2010), pp. 345–347.

Carl P. Daw Jr., “Break thou the bread of life,” Glory to God: A Companion (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2016), pp. 464–465.

Robert Cottrill, “Break thou the bread of life,” Wordwise Hymns (11 Apr. 2018): https://wordwisehymns.com/2018/04/11/break-thou-the-bread-of-life-2/

“Break thou the bread of life,” Hymnary.org: https://hymnary.org/text/break_thou_the_bread_of_life