For Whom the Bell Tolls...

"PERCHANCE he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he

knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so

much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my

state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that.

The church is Catholic, universal, so are all her actions; all that she

does belongs to all. When she baptizes a child, that action

concerns me; for that child is thereby connected to that body which

is my head too, and ingrafted into that body whereof I am a member.

And when she buries a man, that action concerns me: all mankind is

of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is

not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language;

and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several

translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness,

some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every

translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves

again for that library where every book shall lie open to one

another.

As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon calls not

upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come, so this

bell calls us all; but how much more me, who am brought so near the

door by this sickness.

There was a contention as far as a suit (in

which both piety and dignity, religion and estimation, were

mingled), which of the religious orders should ring to prayers

first in the morning; and it was determined, that they should ring

first that rose earliest.

If we understand aright the dignity of

this bell that tolls for our evening prayer, we would be glad to

make it ours by rising early, in that application, that it might be

ours as well as his, whose indeed it is.

The bell doth toll for him

that thinks it doth; and though it intermit again, yet from that

minute that this occasion wrought upon him, he is united to God.

Who casts not up his eye to the sun when it rises? but who takes

off his eye from a comet when that breaks out? Who bends not his

ear to any bell which upon any occasion rings? but who can remove

it from that bell which is passing a piece of himself out of this

world?

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece

of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by

the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as

well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's

death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and

therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

it tolls for thee.

Neither can we call this a begging of misery, or a borrowing

of misery, as though we were not miserable enough of ourselves, but

must fetch in more from the next house, in taking upon us the

misery of our neighbours.

Truly it were an excusable covetousness

if we did, for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath

enough of it. No man hath affliction enough that is not matured and

ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction.

If a man

carry treasure in bullion, or in a wedge of gold, and have none

coined into current money, his treasure will not defray him as he

travels. Tribulation is treasure in the nature of it, but it is not

current money in the use of it, except we get nearer and nearer our

home, heaven, by it.

Another man may be sick too, and sick to

death, and this affliction may lie in his bowels, as gold in a

mine, and be of no use to him; but this bell, that tells me of his

affliction, digs out and applies that gold to me: if by this

consideration of another's danger I take mine own into

contemplation, and so secure myself, by making my recourse to my

God, who is our only security."

~ John Donne, Meditation 17