The Use and Abuse of Church Bells / With Practical Suggestions concerning Them

It has fallen to the writer’s lot, in the Divine dispensation, to be entrusted with the care, or joint care, of very many parishes in various parts of England: and he knows not any one external matter, common to them all, and to the neighbourhoods surrounding them, which has caused him more pain than the ordinary use, and the almost utter neglect for their own proper purposes, of the Church Bells.

Indeed, so much is the proper use of these holy instruments of edification (for such they really are) generally lost sight of, that among all the New Churches which have been builded during the last few years, scarcely any have more than one Bell; a greater number being considered a vain superfluity, a kind of ecclesiastical luxury—or, by deeper thinkers, a link between the Church and the world (and that often in its fiercest contentions, vainest hours, and most carnal aspect) which we may well be rid of.