In Russia, the bell is an instrument of music for the worship of God as truly and really as the organ in any other country! This fact is not mentioned in the accounts we have of the wonderful, enormous, and almost incredibly heavy bells that have been cast in Moscow. But it is the key to what would otherwise be difficult to explain. It appears absurd to cast bells so large as to be next to impossible for convenient use; in danger always of falling and dragging others to ruin in their fall. But when the bell is a medium of communication with the Infinite, and the worship of a people and an empire finds expression in its majestic tones, it ceases to be a wonder that it should have a tongue which requires twenty-four men to move, and whose music should send a thrill of praise into every house in the city, and float away beyond the river into the plains afar. Moscow is the holy city of the Greek Church. Pilgrims come hither from thousands of miles off, and on foot, and sometimes without shoes. I have seen them with staves in their hand, and their travel-worn feet wound up in cloths, wending their way to the sacred hill. And when they draw nigh unto the city, and on the evening air the music of these holy bells is first borne to their ears, they fall upon their faces, prostrate, and worship God. If they could go no further, they would be content to die there, for they have heard the bells of Moscow, and on their majestic tones their souls have been taken up to heaven. This is the sentiment of the superstitious peasant, and it is a beautiful sentiment, ideal indeed, but all the more delicate and exalted. As long as five hundred years ago, this casting of bells was an _art_ in Russia. It is one of the fine arts now. Perhaps our great bell-founders will not admit that the founders there have any more skill in their manufacture than we have, and I am not sure that their bells have any tones more exquisite than ours _would_ have if we would put as much silver and gold into our bell-metal as they do. But so long as those precious metals are at the present premium, little or none of them will find its way into our church bells. We have not the idea of the Russian as to the use of a bell. We use it to call the people to the house of worship. They use the bell for worship. Our bells speak to us. Their bells praise God. They cast their silver and their gold into the molten mass, and it becomes an offering, as on an altar, to him who is worshipped with every silvery note and golden tone of the holy bell.