In the hands of able men, no doubt, there might be much variety of exposition, but with weaker or indolent men preaching extempore, or without notes, it too often ended in a weekly repetition of what had been already said.

An old elder of mine, whose recollection might reach back from sixty to seventy years, said to me one day, 'Now-a-days, people make a work if a minister preach the same sermon over again in the course of two or three years.

When I was a boy, we would have wondered if old Mr.W---- had preached anything else than what we heard the Sunday before.' My old friend used to tell of a clergyman who had held forth on the broken covenant till his people longed for a change.

The elders waited on him to intimate their wish.
They were examined on their knowledge of the subject, found deficient, rebuked, and dismissed, but after a little while they returned to the charge, and the minister gave in.

Next Lord's day he read a large portion of the history of Joseph and his brethren, as the subject of a lecture.