PREACHER’S HOUR GLASS.
It is well known that in Protestant churches generally, and in the Church of Scotland particularly, the preaching of the word has always been reckoned the chief part of the service of the sanctuary. The quantity of preaching that ministers had to give and people had to take in olden times was enormous. There were commonly two diets of worship on the Sabbath and very often what was termed a week-day sermon besides. It was customary for ministers to take up a subject or text and on that subject or text to preach for six or eight Sabbaths consecutively. It seems not to have been uncommon for ministers to take an hour to their sermon. And to keep preachers right in this matter, it was customary to set up a sand glass in the church.
HOUR GLASS STAND.
It is doubtful if in olden times there was as much good order observed in church during divine service as there is now. In some of the old ecclesiastical records, we find curious regulations for the preservation of order in church. In the Kirk Session records of Perth we find an instruction minuted that the kirk-officer “have his red staff in the Kirk on the Sabbath days wherewith to waken sleepers and remove greeting bairns.” In 1593 complaint was made at Perth of boys in time of preaching running through the church clattering and fighting.
The hours of church service on Sundays were much earlier long ago than they are now. In 1615 the Kirk Session of Lasswade appointed nine o’clock as the hour on which service should begin in the summer months, and half-past nine as the hour of service in winter.
The neglect of public ordinances has at all times been a subject of lamentation. In olden days many devices are said to have been tried to remedy or abate these evils. Those resorted to by the Covenanters in Aberdeen in 1642 were perhaps as ingenious as any that have ever been adopted. “Our minister,” says Spalding, “teaches powerfullie and plainlie the word to the gryte comfort of his auditores. He takes strait count of those who cumis not to the communion, nor keepis not the kirk, callis out the absentis out of pulpit, quhilk drew in sic a fair auditorie that the seatis of the kirk was not abill to hold thame, for remeid quhair of he causit big up ane loft athwart the body of the kirk.”
Mr Cant did not go quite so far, but being annoyed that his afternoon diets were sparsely attended, he naïvely dismissed his forenoon audience without a benediction, and reserved his blessing for those that returned to the second sermon.