Repetition of Lectures
There are extremes possible here. With a normally busy lecturing brother of ordinary abilities, it would be impossible to prepare adequately a new address for every occasion. It is very unlikely that he would give of his best by attempting it: inadequate preparation and ragged delivery betray the haste with which ideas have been unwillingly forced together. But it is equally unlikely that an address continually repeated will retain the freshness and convincing earnestness which are indispensable. And it is certain that the speaker who insists on working each lecture he prepares into every available port will degrade into a laziness, fixity and self-satisfaction which will culminate in his own boredom.

Between these, there is for most of us the necessity of making our hard wrought lecture do more work than one occasion provides. There is no reason why we should not. If we are really interested in what we have to say, the interest will not diminish from saying it twice or more, while our facility and resource will improve. Flaws will appear and can be dealt with. Bad lectures will reveal themselves and be discarded, good ones be approved and refined. The safeguard against staleness is to refuse to let such a successful venture satisfy us until a duplicate visit to the same ecclesia obliges us to prepare another. If we arrive at sufficient leisure to begin anew, then we should without delay enlarge our resources, and in time the very development of our thought will displace that lecture by other and better ones.