Hymn #321: Break Now the Bread of Life | First Congregational Church

Mary Artemisia Lathbury (1841-1913) was asked to write this “study hymn” by John H. Vincent, one of the founders of the Chautauqua, New York, Literary and Scientific Circle. The hymn prayer has been a standard part of the Chautauqua Institution’s Sunday evening vespers services for over a century.

Mary A. Lathbury was born on August 10, 1841, in Manchester New York. She was a leader in the Chautauqua movement, becoming the unofficial poet laureate of that group. An active Methodist layperson and artist, she was at one time the editor of the Methodist Sunday School Union publications.

William Fiske Sherwin (1826-1888) wrote the tune BREAD OF LIFE for this text in 1877, and they have been together ever since. Sherwin, a Baptist, was music director of the Chautauqua Methodist Assembly in the summer of 1877.

William F. Sherwin was considered a “genial tyrant” as a choral conductor. One newspaper writer described him as one “who would scold his chorus until they cried and then heal all their hearts with his ‘Day Is Dying in the West.’” Sherwin studied with Lowell Mason and was on the faculty at the New England Conservatory of Music, in Boston.