That great fashionable church of mid-Victorian faith and manners held a congregation on Sunday mornings for which the Rector catered with care.
It said a good deal for Peter that he had been invited to preach.

He ought to have had his determined scheme plain before him, and a few sentences, carefully polished, at hand for the beginning and the end.

He could trust himself in the middle, and was perfectly conscious of that.
He frankly liked preaching, liked it not merely as an actor loves to sway his audience, but liked it because he always knew what to say, and was really keen that people should see his argument.

And yet this morning, when he should have been prepared for the best he could do, he was not prepared at all.
Strictly, that is not quite true, for he had a text, and the text absolutely focused his thought.

But it was too big for him.