Very often I heard one student or another tell of some startling thing that he had heard Dr. Parker say: and, more than once, I subsequently heard the great preacher say that very thing from this throne at the Temple. 

   This discovery has proved of infinite comfort and of incalculable value to me. I am profoundly convinced that the average preacher is too much afraid of saying the same thing twice. If his utterance has savored of sublimity, let him boldly take its encore for granted. If what he has said was not worth saying, then, of course, it was a mistake to have said it at all. If, on the other hand, it was worth saying, then it is the height of absurdity to pledge himself never to repeat it. Only during the first five years of my ministry did I attempt, under pressure of necessity, to prepare two sermons a week. After five years at Mosgiel, I made it a rule to concentrate each week on the preparation of one new sermon. Then, as Sunday drew near, I hunted out one of my earlier manuscripts and set myself so to improve it as to make it more effective than on its previous delivery. All through the years I have proceeded upon this plan, and, if I had my time over again, I should act similarly.

   Every good sermon should be given many times. The leakage, in each delivery, is enormous. To the preacher the utterance is so absorbing that he is tempted to imagine that each hearer has caught every word and grasped the full significance of each separate thought. Such is never the case; never! Between his own lips, however eloquent, and the intellectual perception of his listeners there are innumerable avenues for the leakage of his energy. The acoustic properties of the building may not be perfect. The ears of the congregation may not be good. Sultry conditions or defective ventilation may induce drowsiness. And then, even at the best of times, thoughts are wayward things. Minds will wander. Even during the delivery of his most impassioned periods, the men will, in a flight of fancy, slip back to their offices; the mothers will be once more among the little ones at home; the young men and maidens will be dreaming romantically of each other. Everything is not heard; and, even if heard, everything is not fully comprehended.

   Dr. Parker and Dr. Meyer taught me that the only remedy for this kind of thing lies in sane and judicious repetition. It is the duty of the pulpit to say the same things over and over again. They must be clothed in different phraseology, and illumined by fresh illustration, and approached by a new line of thought; but the things that are really worth saying must be said repeatedly.  

My Pilgrimage - F.W. Boreham