Bread of the world in mercy broken

Reginald Heber’s Communion hymn—headed ‘Before the Sacrament’— was published posthumously as two 4-line stzs in Hymns Written and Adapted to the Weekly Church Service of the Year, in 1827. Since then it has proved welcome among virtually all traditions of Christians, appearing regularly in widely varied hymnals. The opening phrase, though not exactly biblical, has proved acceptable (cf John 17:16), and like every line which follows expresses its own distinct thought involving more than meets the eye. Pronouns apart, the only change is from ‘be’ to ‘make’ in 1. 7; cf 847 line 1.

The now usual arrangement of the text as a single 8-line stz is due to the widespread use of the 16th-c tune, 98 98 in the key of D, LES COMMANDEMENTS DE DIEU (‘The Commandments of God’). However, the choice here of WAYFARING STRANGER (as in the 1990 American book The Worshiping Church) preserves the familiar shape of what is after all a rare one-sentence hymn. Praise Trust has arranged the melody for the present book, which appears to be the first British hymnal to use it in this way. It is widely known in the USA as the tune to I’m just a poor wayfaring stranger, but the melody predates those words. Its first section comes from the Georgia Sacred Harp of 1844, followed by the second part as quoted in Nathaniel Dett’s 1827 Folk Songs of the Negroes, sung at Hampton Institute.

HEBER, Reginald, b Malpas Rectory, Cheshire 1783, d Trichinopoly, India 1826. Whitchurch Grammar Sch, Shrops, and private tuition at Neasden, Middlesex; Brasenose Coll Oxford; Newdigate Prize (1803) for his poem Palestine. John Ellerton, who became familiar with Heber’s native Cheshire 70 years later, says that he almost ‘took Oxford by storm…and he never lost a friend save by death’. In 1805 he became a Fellow of All Souls; after travels in Germany and Russia with John Thornton he was ordained to succeed his father (who held 2 livings several miles apart) as Rector of Hodnet in 1807, where he remained for 16 years. Rowland Hill (qv) was for a time a somewhat fiery and eccentric neighbour. Heber admired Newton and Cowper’s Olney Hymns and his own texts appeared in the firmly evangelical journal The Christian Observer from 1811; they were signed only ‘D.R.’, the final letters of his two names. Heber had begun to base new texts on the Sunday Epistle and Gospel, to be sung (daringly then!) after the sermon and creed, as part of an integrated approach within the service. His work was refused official authorisation, but he begged texts from poets such as Scott, Southey and Milman, and revived older material, for an influential collection published after his death (1827) including 57 of his own hymns written at Hodnet: Hymns written and adapted to the Weekly Church Service of the Year. 11 of these are found in EH, as also in the 1950 A&M Revised. Remarkably for his time, a national hymn includes, ‘From foes that would the land devour,/ from guilty pride and lust of power…’.

Heber was a reviewer, Bampton lecturer (1815), Lincoln’s Inn preacher (1822), biographer and editor of the complete works of Jeremy Taylor (1822), and for relaxation he loved sketching. From a distance he was attracted by India, but when offered the bishopric of Calcutta (with a diocese which then included Australia) he twice refused. In 1823, against his friends’ advice, he finally accepted, and began an energetic, gracious and prayerful ministry (as Calcutta’s 2nd bishop). He ordained the first Indian Anglican clergyman, Christian David, and founded the Bishop’s College, Calcutta. He was tireless in his travels, strongly opposed the Muslim treatment of women, but also respected local culture. But his health suffered, and after preaching in Tamil at a Confirmation service at Trichinopoly he suffered a stroke or brain haemorrhage and was found dead in his bath by a servant. His widow Amelia survived him.Julian assesses his writing as embodying purity, grace and reverence rather than scriptural strength or dogmatic force; one of the first was the archetypal From Greenland’s icy mountains (1819, with its famous lines about ‘Ceylon’s isle’), while Tennyson counted Holy, holy, holy as the greatest of all hymns. Some of his stirring missionary hymns are among those currently sung in Nigeria by ‘sending’ churches who have no doubt where the ‘heathen’ and the ‘benighted’ are now largely to be found. Nos.159, 387, 643, 865*.