From old usage, bells are intimately connected with the services of the Christian church—so much so, that apparently from a spirit of opposition, the Mohammedans reject the use of bells, and substitute for them the cry of the Imaum from the top of the mosques. Associated in various ways with the ancient ritual of the church, bells acquired a kind of sacred character. They were founded with religious ceremonies (see Schiller's ode), and consecrated by a complete baptismal service; received names, had sponsors, were sprinkled with water, anointed, and finally covered with the white gar ment or chrisom, like infants. This usage is as old as the time of Alcuin, and is still practiced iu Roman Catholic countries. Bells had mostly pious inscriptions, often indicative of the wide-spread belief in the mysterious virtue of their sound. They were believed to disperse storms and pestilence, drive away enemies, extinguish fire, etc. A common inscription in the middle ages was: Funera plango, fulgura frango, Sabbata pango, Each° lentos, dissipo ventos, paco cruentos.
the superstitious usages recorded to have taken place in old St. Paul's church in London, was the "ringinge the hallowed belle in great tempestes or lightninges" (Brand's Popular Antiquities, vol. ii.). From this superstition possibly sprang the later notion, that when the great bell of St. Paul's tolled (which it does only on the death of a member of the royal family, or a distinguished personage in the city) it turned all the beer sour in the neighborhood—a fancy facetiously referred to by Washington Irving in the It would seem that the strange notion that bells are efficacious in dispelling storms, is by no means extinct. In 1852, the bishop of Malta ordered the church-bells to be rung for an hour to allay a gale.
Church-bells were at one time tolled for those passing out of the world. It was a prevailing superstition that bells had the power to terrify evil spirits, no less than to dispel storms; and the custom of ringing what was called the "grew [we quote the writer in the Quarterly Review above referred to] out of the belief that devils troubled the expiring patient, and lay in wait to afflict the soul the moment when it escaped from the body." . . . "The tolling of the passing-bell was retained at the reformation; and the people were instructed that its use was to admonish the living, and excite them to pray for the dying." But "by the beginning of the 18th c., the passing-bell, in the proper sense of the term, had almost ceased to be heard. The toll ing, indeed, continued in the old fashion; .btit it took place after the death, instead of before." The practice of slowly and solemnly tolling church-bells at deaths, or while
funerals are Lein.- conducted, is still a usage in various parts of the country, more par ticularly as a murk of respect for the deceased. There is another use of the bell in reli gion, called the pardon, or are bell, abolished among Protestants. The pardon-bell was tolled before and after divine service, for some time prior to the reformation, to call the worshipers to a preparatory prayer to the Virgin Mary before engaging iu the solem nity, and an invocation for pardon at its close. Bishop Burnet has recorded the order of a bishop of Sarum, in 1538, concerning the discontinuance of the custom. It runs thus: " That the bell called the pardon or ave bell, which of longe tyme bathe been used to be tolled three tymes after and before divine service, be not hereafter in any part of my diocesse any more tollyd." The ringing of the curfew-bell, supposed to have been introduced into England by William the conqueror, was a custom of a civil or political nature, and only strictly observed till the end of the reign of William Rufus. Its object was to warn the public to extinguish their fires and lights at eight o'clock in the evening. The eight o'clock ringing is still continued in many parts of England and Scotland.
As the liberty of public worship in places of meeting by themselves was yielded to dissenters, by the various governments of Europe, only with reluctance, the use of bells in chapels as a summons to divine service is not allowed except in the more enlightened countries. Speaking on this subject as referring to England, lord chief-justice Jervis, in giving judgment on a case tried at the Croydon assizes in 1851, says: " With regard to the right of using bells in places of worship at all, by the common law, churches of every denomination have a full right to use bells, and it is a vulgar error to suppose that there is any distinction at the present time in this respect." Throughout England mid Scotland, however, comparatively few dissenting places of worship possess bells—still fewer have steeples. In towns and villages, the places of worship connected with the established church are commonly distinguished by some kind of belfry or bell-cote with bells. The ringing of these for divine service on Sundays, and on other occasions, forms the theme of many poetical allusions. The lines of Cowper will occur to recollection: How soft the music of those village bells, Falling at interval, upon the ear, In cadence sweet I now dying all away, Now pealing loud again, and louderstill, Clear and sonorous as the gale comes on.