It Rings A Bell

G. Roland Smith

There are no church bells in the Bible. Well, there wouldn't be: presumably they had other ways of calling people to their devotions.

Our parish church has a fine peal of bells - a comfort to the faithful and a plague to those who would rather stay asleep. The sound of bells is an ancient and highly evocative 'public address system' - ringing out over the centuries at times of national mourning or national rejoicing - a call to arms, or a shout of jubilation.

The 'Companion to the English Parish Church' tells me that 'Bells were introduced into the Celtic Church in the sixth century and came into general use in the eighth century' - earlier than I thought. The monasteries indulged in much ringing of bells throughout the day on a pretty regular basis. The monks, no doubt, set their watches by them (if they had any watches to set.) In English churches there are nearly three thousand medieval bells still in use, and the tricky business of 'change-ringing' is some- thing which, since the mid-seventeenth century, only the English seem to have mastered.

From our local church tower, throughout the dreadful days of the foot-and-mouth epidemic, every Sunday at noon, a single bell tolls mournfully across the meadows, and the unwary sheep, with their newborn lambs nibble away unwittingly and take no notice, oblivious that it rings for them. That same bell has announced many a local death - three times three for a man, and three times two for a woman, followed by the age of the deceased, once for every year. It has marked many a funeral over the years, its sombre note in step with the heavy footfall of the bereaved.

On a livelier note, however, the full al sometimes proclaims a wedding - even a royal birth - and the village echoes with cadences of true happiness. Bells can 'speak' in many voices. Their joyful utterance of birth or resurrection is still heard at Christmas and Easter, although other festivals and feast-days have now lost their tongues.

The village echoes
with cadences of true
happiness

There are just a few bells in the Bible - little golden ones. They are specified for the edging of Aaron's robe (Ex.28. 33,34) "And it shall be upon Aaron when he ministers, and its sound shall be heard when he goes into the holy place before the Lord, and when he comes out, lest he die." The people could hear Aaron going about his holy business even when they couldn't see him. Swedenborg explains it thus - the bells stand for something good (they're made of gold) but they are connected with the ordinary - the everyday (they are attached to the hem of the robe). So he seems to be telling us that there is holy goodness to be found in common- place things, and we would do well to listen out for it.

The only other bells I can find are attached to a horse. Zechariah refers in passing to "that day" when "there shall be inscribed on the bells of the horses, 'Holy to the Lord'." There's no mention of what the bells are made of, but being attached to a horse we can be fairly sure that they have something to do with our intellectual life (horses, after all, do get about, and could carry us from place to place). So the bells are said to mean scientific information (what we hear) when it is along the right lines ('Holy to the Lord') - rather a topical theme, these days, when science, so often, seems to be running away with us.

I do hope the church bells will continue to ring out over the English countryside - they still have a lot to say to us.:p>

Editorial Note
There seems to be a high moral lone running throughout most of this issue. This is just the way it worked out, and it is certainly not the policy of Outlook to be continually preaching to its readers.