utility as from direct notices: that they must have very commonly been fixed on churches may be shewn to be certain. A form of the male bird of the common barn-door fowl is often seen affixed as a vane on the spires and pinnacles of our churches. There are decisive proofs that this practice was frequent in the early years of the rule of the Saxon kings. A weathercock is exhibited in the Bayeux tapestry, which was wrought soon after the Conquest, where it is shewn as a proper ornament for the summit of Westminster Abbey and one called expressly the weathercock was in the year 1515 set upon the spindle on the top of Holyrood House in Edinburgh, when it was hallowed by the priests, the bells were rung, and the people partook of a plentiful feast on the occasion. The figure thus placed was an idol of the God supreme. In the English phraseology of some past centuries the word cock signified the Deity. The female gallinaceous fowl was a form occasionally borne by Ked, the chiefest female divinity of the Celtic pantheon." This might favour the opinion that a figure of the hen rather than the cock may have been affixed during the prevalence of the Celtic religion on the tops of barrows and other. sacred structures. Perhaps the male bird may have been used as the symbol of the masculine generative power which was personified under the name of Prydain, once held in such high reverence as to have given the name to our island. The Romans, finding this symbol thus used, would not object to the continued use of it even when their subjects of Britain had been converted from the religion of the Druids and had become Christians: for the Romans. themselves regarded the cock as a bird sacred to Minerva, Mars, and Hercules, and numbers were maintained in several god "By cock and pye," is an oath used in Shakspeare's Comedy of Henry IV. part i. Act v. Scene 1; and Hamlet, Act iv. Scene 5. " Davies' Rites of Druids. Χ temples as sacred symbols, whence it is probable that they also may have exhibited the form of the bird occasionally as a vane on the tops of their temples before their conversion to the Christian faith, and on their churches afterward. Such was the antiquity of the use of vanes fixed on the tops of temples in ancient ages; such also are the proofs of their continued use down to modern times. They had always a symbolical import, generally of a religious character, whenever used, and when fixed on sacred structures were symbols of the Deity. That the fixture on the summit of the spire at Ava was of such intent is most undeniably evident; that the same was the import of the weathercock on Christian spires is, from close analogy, most certain. The battlement of the spire of the Christian church corresponds with the platform on which stands the trumpet-shaped spire of the Birman temple; the mound of the platform answers to the tower of the church: it is raised by stages; the tower of the church contains several stories. The pinnacles of the church battlement correspond with the numerous small spires that surround the principal spire of Shu-maha-deo-prà. The weathercock of the church spire and the ti of the temple are symbols of the same import exactly. These accordances are so close that they must have been the result of one common principle. The records of ancient history afford the assurance that spires such as that of the temple of Ava must have been used long before the introduction into Europe, and consequently that they may have been, or rather are, though somewhat unaccountably, the models of the European spire. Be this as it may, the summits of both are the symbols of the abode and of the presence of the God held to be supreme. Bells, says the bishop of Mende, are brazen vessels, and were first invented in Nola, a city of Campania; wherefore the larger bells are called campanæ, from Campania the x Elian. de Animal. lib. xvii. c. 46. district, and the smaller nola, from Nola the town. The episcopal author assigns to bells such a great variety of symbolical meanings as must produce confusion and render their import useless, on which account all remarks on them might be spared; but since bells are commonly held to be the requisite furniture for church towers, they invite notice, notwithstanding they are held, at least by Protestants, to be of no other use than to announce the time of public worship, and give a musical celebrity to festive occurrences. Bells are said to have been first used in Europe about the end of the third century, and soon afterwards in England. By this must be understood the practice of sounding a bell at certain times during divine service. The nola or small bell was borne in the hand, the campana or large bell must have been suspended in a strong frame of wood, in the tower, and was sounded by a rope, to the lower end of which a ring was usually fixed, to be held in the hand of the person employed to sound the bell, whence the act was called ringing. The practice of ringing by ropes a number of bells forming a peal was used in England about the middle of the eighth century. a The first mention of bells occurs in the Law of Moses, in which they were directed to be appended, together with pomegranates, to the hem of the sacerdotal robe of Aaron. "And it shall be upon Aaron to minister, and his sound shall be heard when he goeth in unto the holy place before the Lord, and when he cometh out, that he die not."b This law was given evidently in compliance, as in many other instances, with heathen prejudices, by which it was taught that no person could see God and live. It appears that bells of the common shape, and of small size that might be borne in hand, were of common use among y Durand. chap. iv. sect. 1. z Fosbrook. Encycl. of Antiq. p. 230. a Oxford Gloss. Art. Bell. Pen. Cyclop. Art. Bell. b Exod. xxviii. 33-35. the Greeks and Romans; who, however, do not appear to have used them in religious rites. In India the hand-bell is used constantly by the Yogi worshippers of Sivà, who sound them when they are about to commence their devotions. Bishop Heber writes, "While I was in one of the temples of the Jains, a good many worshippers entered, chiefly women; each of whom, touching one of the bells which hung from the roof, bent to the ground before one or other of the idols, depositing in some instances flowers or sugarcandy before it." Bells, sometimes of large size, are suspended, as already noticed, near the temples of Buddha in Ceylon, and sounded before the votary prays and makes his offerings. European Russia affords instances of the same usage; for the monstrous bells seen at Moscow and other cities can only have been intended to be suspended at a low height, that they might be conveniently sounded by the coming worshippers.d Durandus writes, e "The reason for consecrating and ringing bells is this, that by their sound the faithful may be mutually cheered on towards their reward; that the devotion of faith may be increased in them; that their fruits of the field, their minds, and their bodies may be defended; that the hostile legions and all the snares of the enemy may be repulsed; that the rattling hail, the whirlwinds, and the violence of tempests and lightning may be restrained; the deadly thunder and blasts of wind may be held off; the spirits of the storm and powers of the air overthrown; and that such as hear them may flee to the bosom of Mother Church, bending every knee before the standard of the Sacred Rood." These are the several reasons given in the Office for the Blessing of Bells. Some other important uses of bells are noticed by the good bishop.f "The bells ought to be rung when any one is dying, that the people hearing may c Heber, Trav. chap. xxv. d Clarke, Trav. chap. vii. Durand. chap. iv. sect. 13. pray for him. For a woman they ring twice, but for a man three times. The bells ought also to be chimed when the corpse is brought to the church." These rules, but especially those given for tolling the bell at the death of a man or a woman, guide the practice in many places at this present day. The symbolical imports assigned by the bishop are too fanciful and groundless to deserve notice. They all depend on the doctrine that all the affairs of this world are regulated and dispensed by superhuman but material spirits, and that these may be influenced by the material action excited by the bell. This is the doctrine on which idolatry is founded. It impugns the omnipotence of Almighty God, who, whether he act by the mediate agency of ministering spirits or by the immediate exercise of his own power, ordereth all things both in heaven and earth. It is he that clotheth the grass which is to-day in the field and to-morrow is cast into the oven: without him not even a sparrow falls, and by him even the hairs of our head are numbered.g From this statement of plain truths it must be inferred that no importance can be attached to church bells: that any symbolical import given to them must be altogether arbitrary, fanciful, and precarious: but they may however be of convenient use by summoning the people to attend the duties of public worship, and on occasion they may be usefully expressive of a general sentiment. Every church of the English establishment is usually surrounded by an area called the churchyard: it is appropriated to the burial of the dead, and is set apart for that purpose by rites of consecration intended to secure the inclosure from encroachment and the remains of the interred from violation. During the prevalence of Romanism the churchyard was supposed to be under the special protection of the saint or holy personage to whom the church was dedicated. That 8 Luke xii. 28. Matt. x. 29, 30. |