Canonical hours

“ A second distinguishing feature in the Sabbath-keeping of Scotland consists in the fact, that we consider the entire Sabbath to be specially and equally consecrated to religion.—The length of the sacred day we believe to be just the same as the length of common days. We know nothing of the distinction of "canonical hours," as if one part of the day were in any degree more hallowed than another ”

“ The books complain that they are cast from their shelves into dark corners, ragged and shivering, and bereft of the cushions which propped up their sides. 'Our vesture is torn off by violent hands, so that our souls cleave to the ground, and our glory is laid in the dust.' The old-fashioned clergy had been accustomed to treat religious books with reverence, and would copy them out most carefully in the intervals of the canonical hours. The monks used to give even their time of rest to the decoration of the volumes which added a splendour to their monasteries. ”

“ Hence are such burdens, as that they make it mortal sin, even without offense to others, to do manual labor on holy-days, a mortal sin to omit the Canonical Hours, that certain foods defile the conscience that fastings are works which appease God that sin in a reserved case cannot be forgiven but by the authority of him who reserved it; whereas the Canons themselves speak only of the reserving of the ecclesiastical penalty, and not of the reserving of the guilt. ”

“ The hour of rising was the same, but bed-time was an hour earlier; dinner was changed from 11.30 to 2; siesta and supper at 6 o'clock were suppressed; the canonical hours were the same, except vespers and compline, which were changed from 5.15 and 7.25 to 4.30 and 6.15.
"It is not pleasant to drag oneself from bed in the middle of the night," sighed Durtal, "but I am inclined to think that the Retreatants are not subject to this rule of wakefulness," and he took up another card. ”

“ It has already been indicated, by reference to Matins, Lauds, &c., that not only each day, but each part of the day, has its own office, the day being divided into liturgical “hours.” A detailed account of these will be found in the article Hours, Canonical. Each of the hours of the office is composed of the same elements, and something must be said now of the nature of these constituent parts, of which mention has here and there been already made. ”

“ Nor does Christian liberty, which they bring forth as an argument, avail them, since this is not liberty, but prodigious license, which, inculcated on the people, excites them to fatal and most dangerous sedition. For Christian liberty is not opposed to ecclesiastical usages since they promote what is good, but it is opposed to the servitude of the Mosaic law and the servitude of sin. "Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin," says Christ, John 8:34. Hence their breaking fasts, their free partaking of meats, their neglect of canonical hours, their omission of confession--viz. ”

“ In the larger cities, the periods or hours were announced by the sound of a trumpet; in the country few persons cared how the hours of the night passed. The custom of proclaiming the hours of the night prevailed in some countries of Europe, especially in Germany, long after clocks had come into almost universal use. It is not known when the Romans began to divide the day into twenty-four hours. ”

“ An hour of time, according to modern reckoning, is invariably sixty minutes. But the ancient Jewish hour was not a fixed measure of time. It varied in length as each successive day and night varied in theirs at different seasons of the year. Neither did the Jews begin their days and nights as we do. Our day of twenty-four hours always begins at midnight. ”

“ But at any cost, my dear friend and Brother in the Ministry, we must have our Morning Watch with God, in prayer and in His Word, before all the day's action. Not even the earliest possible Church service can rightly take the place of that.
GOOD HOURS AT NIGHT.
It is obvious to add that punctuality and early hours in the morning will bring into your life another rule; that of punctuality and reasonably good hours at night. No temptation is greater, sometimes, for the man alone than to ignore or break such a rule. ”

“ The first measure of the value of our time is the Holy Mass. The first-fruits of a priest's time belong to God, and they are offered every morning in the Holy Mass. Half an hour of preparation and half an hour of thanksgiving ought never to be given up to any other use or purpose, for they are not ours to give away. This is the first measure of the value of our time. In it we speak with God, commune with our Divine Master, and give thanks to the everblessed Trinity. What should be the fervent use of the hours of a day that is so begun? ”

“ Europeans in general, like the ancient Egyptians, place the commencement of the civil day at midnight, and reckon twelve morning hours from midnight to midday, and twelve evening hours from midday to midnight. Astronomers, after the example of Ptolemy, regard the day as commencing with the sun’s culmination, or noon, and find it most convenient for the purposes of computation to reckon through the whole twenty-four hours. ”

“ It is well that modern clocks have no wise saws and [Pg 32] mottoes telling of the unalterable hand of Time; "Old Time, the clock-setter, that bald sexton, Time," as Shakespeare says in King John.
Early Mechanism.—The problem for the old clockmakers who wished to supplant the primitive measurement of time by candle, by the hour-glass, and later by the sundial, was to produce a piece of mechanism which would in twenty-four hours, the prescribed period of day and night, indicate the flight of time hour by hour. ”

“ In North America, in the extreme case, the difference amounted to four hours, and it seemed asking too much of men to call eight o'clock in their morning, or it might be four o'clock in their afternoon, their noonday. ”

“ At the present day an indispensable factor in our daily occupations is some apparatus for measuring the time. This was not of so much consequence in Greek antiquity, and, in fact, the means for exact division were wanting. They had no exact arrangement of days extending from midnight to midnight, with twenty-four hours of equal length, but instead they distinguished between day-time and night-time, calculating from sunrise to sunset, and naturally the length of these periods differed according to the time of year. ”

“ But, says one, I should like to keep the Sabbath in time, just as Jesus did. Then you must live in Palestine, where their day begins seven hours earlier than ours; and yet it is at 6 o'clock in the evening the same period, though not the same by the sun, in which we begin our day. Let me illustrate: our earth, something in the form of an orange, is whirling over every twenty-four hours. ”

“ Experience, and to a certain extent tradition, are their only guides for telling the different seasons of the year; they have not the slightest remembrance of their ancient calendar system. They are accustomed to hear clocks strike where such exist, but otherwise, simply from the course of the sun, moon, and stars, they are able to regulate the hours of the day and night, more or less. ”

“ A clock is just a mechanical invention that ticks off the movements of the sun into seconds and minutes and hours. Both clocks and calendars, therefore, are mere measuring tricks. Time goes on, or does not go on, just the same, whether you possess these inventions or whether you do not possess them. Both clocks and calendars go at the same rate whether Time goes fast or slow. ”

“ The time-table further prescribed Latin Composition for the recess and the dinner hour, ("literature," however, during the meal) , and varied its injunctions for the rest of the twenty-four hours according to the day of the week. Not a moment for Satan and that "mischief still" of his. Only three-score and ten has the confidence, as well as the time, to be idle. ”

“ On the signal for the termination of the hour of repose the religious came from the dormitory and, having washed, sat in the cloister till the notice was given to proceed to the church for None, which at this time of the year would have been finished some time between 12.30 and one o’clock.
11. THE DAILY WORK
The chief working hours in a mediæval monastery, including a period for recreation and outdoor exercise, were between twelve o’clock and five in winter, and one o’clock and six in summer. ”

“ As time is the regular and unbroken succession of minutes, hours, days, months, and years, one portion of it cannot be more sacred than another, unless it derives a sanctity from the command of God; and since he has enjoined the observance of the Sabbath only, as that portion of time which we are to hold sacred, we feel ourselves under no obligation to keep the holidays which are set apart by mere human authority. ”

“ QUESTION: Concerning the holy verse: "In regions where the days and nights grow long, let times of prayer be gauged by clocks..."
ANSWER: The intention is those territories that are remote. In these climes, however, the difference in length is but a few hours, and therefore this ruling doth not apply. ”

“ Hence if the numbers one, two, and three had been used to denote any of the actual hours, confusion might have arisen between them and the preliminary strokes,—a confusion analogous to that which, in our own still imperfect method of striking the hour, leaves us in doubt whether the single stroke we hear be half-past twelve, one o'clock, half-past one, or any other of the numerous half-hours. Old-fashioned clocks, arranged on the system just described, are still sometimes exposed for sale in the curio-shops. ”

“ The discoveries of modern science have lately driven our sacerdotalists to a new and absurd interpretation of the story of creation by alleging that the six days spoken of were not periods of twenty-four hours each, but six indefinite periods of very long duration. But it would be easy to furnish numerous admissions of orthodox scholars that the six days of the creative week were intended by the writers to describe ordinary days, of twenty-four hours each, and not indefinite periods. ”

“ M MACHINE, AN ACCURATE
A fine clock, reminding a community of the lapse of time and of the value of the fleeting minutes and hours, is an object of much public interest. Some clocks have a particular historic interest due to their long and accurate service in behalf of a hurrying and often heedless humanity. A number of invited guests were recently privileged to be present one night in Strasburg Cathedral to observe the mechanism of the famous clock. ”

“ Now as the beginning of each year varies, one commencing at the sixth hour of the day, another at the same hour of the night, to prevent the calculation from throwing all science into confusion by its perplexing diversity, and the months of autumn from sometimes being found to come in the spring, it has been settled that those six hours which in a period of four years amount to twenty-four shall be put together so as to make one day and night. ”

“ The amount of human ingenuity expended on time measures so as to divide the time from sunrise to sunset into 12 equal parts is almost beyond belief. In Constantinople, to-day, this is used, but in a rather imperfect manner, for the clocks are modern and run 24 hours uniformly; so the best they can do is to set them to mark twelve at sunset. ”

“ If we begin at nine we work till five, and so on—eight p.m. being our latest hour. Night duty is performed by men, who are divided into two sections, and it is so arranged that each man has an alternate long and short duty—working three hours one night and thirteen hours the next. ”

“ How many hours bring about the day,
How many days will finish up the year,
How many years a mortal man may live."
Shakspeare.
The Chaldaeans, Syrians, Persians, and Indians began the day at sun-rise, and divided both the day and night into four parts. This division of the day into quarters was in use long before the invention of hours.
The Chinese, who begin their day at midnight, and reckon to the midnight following, divide this interval into twelve hours, each equal to two of ours, and distinguished by a name and particular figure. ”

“ Old man with the scythe and hour-glass, I defy thee! I will admit that three o’clock post meridian, requires much deliberation and cogitation, in order to give the millions of human marionettes, of whom I hold, temporarily, the strings, their suitable employment ”

“ About 1679 Nicholas Grallier de Servierre, an old soldier who had served in the Italian army, constructed a whimsical clock. A figure of a tortoise, dropped into a plate of water, having the hours marked on the rim, would float around and stop at the proper time, telling what o'clock it was. A lizard ascended a pillar, on which the hours were marked, and pointed to the time as it advanced. A mouse did the same thing by creeping along an hour-marked cornice.
Clock Presented to Charlemagne. ”

“ Are there not twelve hours in the day? The Jews divided every day into twelve hours, and made their hours longer or shorter according as the days were, so that an hour with them was the twelfth part of the time between sun and sun; so some. Or, lying much more south than we, their days were nearer twelve hours long than ours. The divine Providence has given us day-light to work by, and lengthens it out to a competent time; and, reckoning the year round, every country has just as much daylight as night, and so much more as the twilights amount to. Man's life is a day ”