He had been too poor to buy many, and the conditions of canvassing about among one's parishioners which the thrifty Book Concern imposes upon those who would have without buying, had always repelled him.

Now, suddenly, as he moved along the two shelves, he felt ashamed at their beggarly showing.
"The Land and the Book," in three portly volumes, was the most pretentious of the aids which he finally culled from his collection.
Beside it he laid out "Bible Lands," "Rivers and Lakes of Scripture," "Bible Manners and Customs," the "Genesis and Exodus" volume of Whedon's Commentary, some old numbers of the "Methodist Quarterly Review," and a copy of "Josephus" which had belonged to his grandmother, and had seen him through many a weary Sunday afternoon in boyhood.

He glanced casually through these, one by one, as he took them down, and began to fear that they were not going to be of so much use as he had thought.
Then, seating himself, he read carefully through the thirteen chapters of Genesis which chronicle the story of the founder of Israel.
Of course he had known this story from his earliest years.

In almost every chapter he came now upon a phrase or an incident which had served him as the basis for a sermon.

He had preached about Hagar in the wilderness, about Lot's wife, about the visit of the angels, about the intended sacrifice of Isaac, about a dozen other things suggested by the ancient narrative.