HOUR-GLASSES IN CHURCH.
To restrain over-eloquent or over-zealous preachers in the length of their discourses, hour-glasses were introduced in churches about the period of the Reformation. In the frontispiece prefixed to the Bible of the Bishops' Translation, printed in 1569, Archbishop Parker is represented with an hour-glass standing on his right hand. Clocks and watches being then but rarely in use, the hour-glass was had recourse to as the only convenient public remembrancer which the state of the arts could then supply. The practice of using them became generally prevalent, and continued till the period of the Revolution. The hour-glass was placed either on the side of the pulpit, or on a stand in front. "One whole houre-glasse," "one halfe houre-glasse," occur in an inventory taken about 1632 of the properties of the church of All Saints at Newcastle-on-Tyne. Daniel Burgess, a Nonconformist preacher at the commencement of last century, alike famous for the length of his pulpit harangues and the quaintness of his illustrations, was once vehemently declaiming against the sin of drunkenness. Having exhausted the customary time, he turned the hour-glass, and said, "Brethren, I have somewhat more to say on the nature and consequences of drunkenness; so let's have the other glass and then—" The jest, however, seems to have been borrowed from the frontispiece of a small book, entitled England's Shame, or a Relation of the Life and Death of Hugh Peters, published in 1663; where Peters is represented preaching, and holding an hour-glass in his left hand, in the act of saying, "I know you are good fellows; so let's have another glass."