Chapter 26: XXVI

XXVI I was in a strange mood when I mounted the pulpit that night. The church was unusually full. I cannot believe that it was the prospect of Hawes preaching which had attracted so many. Hawes’s sermons are dull and dogmatic. And if the news had got round that I was preaching instead, that would not have attracted them either. For my sermons are dull and scholarly. Neither, I am afraid, can I attribute it to devotion. Everybody had come, I concluded, to see who else was there, and poss…