Few, if any, human inventions, embody so much moral character, as the time-keepers. Poets and preachers have been helped to many useful truths by this device. The prophet Isaiah (2 Kings 20) made most effective use of "the dial of Ahaz," in his solemn errand to the dying Hezekiah. What force it gave to that miracle!
The passage of time has always been a favourite theme to Christian minds. Instruments to measure it, have, of course, been favourites also. 
On the pulpits of our Puritan fathers it was common to see an iron frame, in which stood the primitive hour-glass. Children then knew what the primer means -
"As runs the glass
Men's life doth pass."
How that silent monitor of time spoke to the heart! It was a natural, forceful preacher in that solemn house where time and eternity came so near together. The falling sands were emblems of years and hours of crumbling in silent fragments into eternity.
Mechanical skill has replaced the dial and hour-glass with the more complete if less attractive, clock. But it is a fit appendage to the walls of the sanctuary also. Its iron finger, slowly but unceasingly, travels the unending circle - a meter of time - an emblem of eternity. It is an iron finger - unfeeling - almost remorseless. The young cannot cheat it, nor the old and trembling stop its ceaseless march. It ever points on: on to death, the grave, and eternity. How it preaches to dying, fading man. Each faint tick is the knell of a departed moment, bearing in its flight some soul into eternity. It is the warning concerning another moment of our lives - a dying warning - as that moment goes on to mingle with all the moments gone before in eternity. In the day of judgment, surely these measured moments will accuse those who refused to be ready for such a day. Will they not be a witness against those "taken at unawares?" Reader, when you next hear the tick of the clock breaking your silence, think! Think what a lesson of eternity you are being given.
In one of my college years, a fellow-pupil suddenly died at a young age. On the Sabbath following his death, the Principal of the college employed the Chapel clock in the course of his sermon and spoke very forcibly to some of us. He said, "Young man, you are now strong and full of health; but I tell you, the spade that shall dig your grave may be already forged, and that clock (pointing to the one on the gallery) be counting out the moments in the last Sabbath day of your life."
He paused. It was like the stillness of the grave for a moment; but I shall never forget the tick of "that clock." It went into my soul; it seemed like the sound of the key in the door of the everlasting world. No voice or no words could have searched us out like the speech of the moments of our lives ticking away before us. Since that day, I look on the face and listen soberly to the voice of the sanctuary clock.