Jasper County Democrat, Volume 19, Number 91, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 February 1917 — Consecrated Bells. [ARTICLE]

Consecrated Bells.

Bells were anciently consecrated before they were raised to ’their places. This applied not only to church bells, but to others. Each was dedicated to some divine personage, saint or martyr. One of the finest bits of word painting in Shakespeare occurs in the mention of a bell when King John addressing Hubert says: If the midnight bell Did with his iron tongye and dragon mouth. • ' ■ i Sound one unto the drowsy race of night. One jof the strongest pictures painted by Charles Dickens iS that miser and usurer, ’Ralph Nickleby, cursing the iron-tongued midnight bell, after which, in a fit of mingled frenzy, hatred and, despair he hangs himself. Commenting on Shakespeare’s lines, the Book of Days says: “Here, ‘brazen’ Implies not merely that particular mixture of copper and calariline, called brass', but in a broader sense any metal wfyich.is compound with copper?’