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IN a city whose history dates from the ages of silvery bells and
stately buildings, there stood, and stands now for aught I know, a
cathedral, rich in all the endless fancies of Gothic art. Inside, it
was solemn with shade, and gorgeous with light which came in through
the elaborate tracery of the stained windows, many-coloured, and broken
as the sunbeams through a tropical forest. Outside, fretted pinnacles
and carved bell-towers sprang upward, grand yet fairy-like, as if stone
towers rose as easily and naturally towards heaven as oaks and pines.
But the chief glory of this cathedral was its bells. They were the
pride of the city, and the great attraction to strangers. Their history
formed an important part of the civic chronicles.
A lady of a royal house had given them as a thank offering for her
lord's safe return from the Crusades. All her silver-plate and
ornaments, with spoils of Saracens from the recovered Holy Land, had
been poured into the mould when they were made, so that from their
birth all tender and sacred memories had been fused into their very
essence, and their first tones echoed far-off times and lands.
A bishop who afterwards suffered martyrdom in the hands of African
Moslems had blessed them. Their first peal had sounded in honour of a
great victory. They had summoned the people through ages of conflict to
defend their liberties. They had blended their life with the life of
every home,—in family joys and family sorrows, at wedding, christening,
and funeral. They had made Sundays and holidays glad with their joyous
voices. And last, but not least, by aid of an elaborate mechanism of
hammers, rope, and pulleys, they had for centuries celebrated the
departure of every hour with a chorale, and every half-hour with a
strain like the versicle of a chant, and every quarter of an hour with
a little sprinkle of sweet sound.
Imagine, then, the dismay of the citizens, when, one Monday morning,
eight o'clock came, and no sound issued from the cathedral; half-past
eight, silence; nine, not a note of warning! Their wonder was increased
when the usual peal rung out, clear and full as ever, for the morning
service, and by mid-day the whole city was in a commotion. It was plain
something must be wrong with the machinery of the chimes.
Immediately the most skilful mechanics of the town, clock-makers and
bell-founders, with the men of science, and the whole corporation, in a
state-procession, mounted the clock-tower.
"We will soon set it right," they said to the agitated crowd as they
entered the belfry-door.
The ropes of the machinery were tested,—all were sound; not a
flaw in the hammers; not a clog in the wheels; not a crack in the
silvery metal. Microscopes were employed, conjectures were hazarded,
experiments of all kinds were tried, but not a ray of light was thrown
on the perplexity. The clever hands, and the wise heads, and the will
of the authorities were all baffled; and the procession reappeared to
the assembled multitudes with very crestfallen looks.
That afternoon little work was done in the workshops, few lessons
were learned in the schools, all the routine of household habits was
interrupted. And when it grew dark, the Great Square was filled with
people who were afraid to separate and go to bed without the sanction
of the cathedral chimes. Many foreboded some terrible disaster to the
city, and some thought the end of the world was come.
But when it was dark, a sound very weird and strange, yet with a music
like the old familiar tones, came from the church-tower, as it rose dim
and grand against the starry sky. It was a voice, not human, yet with a
strange likeness to a human voice, silvery as a stream, thrilling as a
battle-trumpet, familiar to each listener as his own, like the blended
voices of a spirit and a bell.
"We have borne it too long," said the bell-voice. "We were set here
on high for other purposes than men have put us to. Is not this a
cathedral, a sanctuary, and a shrine, sacred with the dust of martyrs,
and dedicated to the service of Heaven? Were not we christened like
immortals? Were not we consecrated like priests? The touch of holy
hands is on us, and shall we be debased to secular uses? Set apart like
sacred ministers in a sacred dwelling, shall we be required to mingle
in the common circumstances of your daily life? Raised on high to be
near the heavens we serve, shall our saintly voices serve to tell you
when to eat and sleep?
"We have borne it too long. We will still serve Heaven, and summon you
on Sundays and Holydays. We will call you to the solemn services of
the Church. We will, if necessary, sound a triumphant peal on days of
national thanksgiving, in remembrance of the Victory which first awoke
us into music. We will even condescend to ring at your weddings—because
marriage is a sacrament—and at your baptisms. We will toll solemnly
when your spirits pass from earth, and when your bodies are laid in
the churchyard we have seen slowly raised with the dust of your dying
generations.
"But henceforth expect us not to do work which your commonest
house-clocks can do as well. Let your eight-day clocks—your gilded
time-pieces—call you to work, and eat, and rest. We are sacred
things, set solemnly apart from all secular uses. Our business is
with Eternity, and the Church, and Heaven. Call on us no more to
commune with the things of the world, and earth, and time. We are your
cathedral bells, but we will be your household clock-chimes no longer."
Then the voice died away on the night air. For a few minutes there was
silence, but soon it was broken by sobs and lamentations, and all the
people lifted up their voice as one man, and wept.
The house-father said, "Shall we never more hear your voice calling us
to morning and evening prayer? Whenever you told us it was the hour,
the mother came from her work, and the children from their play, and
together we knelt a united family, and committed each other to God."
And the mother said, "Your voices are blended with every happy
household time. Sweet bells, will you mingle with our family joys no
more? In the morning you wakened us to begin another busy day, and the
sun's beams and your voices came together to call us to serve God in
our lowly calling; and both, we thought, came to us from heaven; and
both, we thought, were meek and lowly, and ready to minister to us in
our daily lives, because both were sent from Him who came among us
once, not to be ministered unto, but to minister; and both, we thought,
had caught something of the light of the eyes which wept at Bethany,
and of the tones of the voice which spoke at Cana and at Nain.
"At mid-day you told me it was time to send the dinner to my husband
and my elder sons. At six your voice was welcome to us all, because we
knew the father's step would soon be on the threshold. At eight you
reminded me it was time to lay the little ones to rest, and many a time
have you brought happy and holy thoughts to me in those psalms you
sang to me whilst I hushed my babes to sleep; and all my everyday life
seemed to be more linked with sacred things, to become, as it were,
a part of the service of God, because it moved to the music of your
voices.
"And again at night your tones were welcome, as in the morning, when
they told us the day's work was over, and, wearied, we lay down to
peaceful rest. For through the night we knew your sacred voices would
sound to Heaven above our sleeping city, like the voices of the angels,
who rest not day nor night, saying, Holy, holy, holy. Sweet bells, will
you never chime for us again?"
And the children said, in their clear, sweet, ringing voices, "Dear
chimes, do not cease to play to us. You wake us to the happy day, you
set us free from school, and send us home laughing and dancing for joy;
you call our fathers home to us, at night you sing us to sleep, and
your voices are blended with our mothers' in our happy dreams. Sweet
chimes, you sang so many years to our fathers and mothers; and our
grandfathers remember you when they were little children like us. Dear
chimes, sing to us still."
And from the sick-chamber, which looked into the cathedral square,
where the windows were darkened all day, and sand was strewn before the
door, that the din of the passing wheels might jar less roughly on the
aching head within, came a low and plaintive voice,—"Sweet bells, your
commonest tones are sacred to me. You are my church music, the only
church music I can ever hear. When I hear you chime the hour on Sundays
and on the festivals, I feel myself among the multitude within your
sacred walls, and your voice seems to bear their songs of praise to me,
and I am no more alone, but one of the worshippers.
"But at night it is I prize you most. All through the hours of
darkness, so often sleepless to me, your voice is the voice of a
friend, familiar as my mother's, yet solemn as the chants of the choir.
It helps me to measure off the hours of pain, and say, 'Thank God, an
hour less of night, and an hour nearer morning.' And how often, when my
suffering is great, you have come with the old psalm-tune, and every
tone has brought its word to me, and spoken to me as if direct from
God, and filled my heart with trust and peace! Your least sprinkles of
sweet sound are precious to me. I fancy they are like the waters of
time falling musically from stone to stone on their way to the great
sea. I feel they are as the echoes of the footsteps of Him who is
drawing nearer and nearer to me, and they draw my heart nearer to Him.
"Sweet bells, your commonest tones are sacred, for what is the world
but that which becomes the Church when it learns how God has loved
it, and turns from self to Him? And what is Earth but the floor of
Heaven, which heavenly feet once trod? And what is Time but the little
fragment of Eternity in which we live on earth? Sweet bells, make not
my sleepless nights lonely and silent, but sing to me, sing to us all,
as of old. Make all our life sacred by linking every fragment of our
life to God."
But still no responsive sound came from the cathedral tower, and the
people waited on in the silence and the darkness. At last a young
priest, an Augustinian friar, ventured a bold suggestion:
"Are not the devils proud, and the angels lowly? Did the angel think it
beneath him to say to Elijah, 'Arise, and eat?' Did Gabriel hesitate to
descend from the presence of God to bear to an aged priest the tidings
of the birth of a child? Did that other angel deem it secular to say to
Peter the apostle, 'Gird thyself, and bind on thy sandals, and cast thy
garment about thee,' before he led him over the stony streets through
the cold night air? And should our cathedral bells scorn to bid us
'rise and eat,' or to chime at our births, or to summon us to 'gird and
clothe' ourselves for every day's work? Brethren, proud thoughts, and
scorn of daily service, and voices which call our everyday life common
and unclean, are not from Heaven. The bells are possessed by a proud
and evil spirit. Let us exorcise them."
The suggestion at first startled the people as daring, and irreverent
to the church bells, but in their despair, they at length agreed to try
it. A solemn procession of priests and holy men and women mounted the
cathedral tower, and, in ancient formulas, with prayer and incense, and
the music of holy hymns, they exorcised the fiend.
Then at once a tide of pent-up music flowed from the liberated bells.
They conscientiously rang out all at once every hour and half-hour
they had omitted, and then meekly and steadily resumed their wonted
chimes, and continued them ever afterwards, like voices of happy and
lowly angels calling men to wake and pray, to "rise and eat," to pray
and rest, cheering the workman to his daily labour, and welcoming him
from it, chanting to the mother as she lulled her babe, and in the
sick-chamber soothing the lonely hours with melodious sound, and waking
in the lonely heart sweet echoes of the psalms of praise.
Here the Legend ended. I heard, however, afterwards that the young
priest, the Augustinian friar, lived to spread Glad Tidings through
the city, but that he was at last burned in the cathedral square for
preaching to men what he had said about the church bells. Yet in the
flames, it was said, he looked up to the cathedral tower, and sang the
words of a psalm of praise the old bells were chiming, till his voice
was silenced in death. And ever since, the chimes have taken up his
message, and chant to those who will listen, hour by hour.
"'Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to
the glory of God.'"
What Makes Things Musical?
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