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Now this bell tolling softly for another, says to me, Thou must die.
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 head which is my head too, and
ingrafted into the 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 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 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 that 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 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 are not
miserable enough of ourselves but must fetch in more from the next
house, in taking upon us the misery of our neighbors. 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 moneys, 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 dangers I
take mine own into contemplation and so secure myself by making my
recourse to my God, who is our only security.
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Read John Donne's classic poem, "The Sun Rising."
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