He was practising upon me to see if there was any hope of his being able to read the document to his prayer-meeting with anything like a decent command over his feelings.

The result was not promising.
However, he determined to risk it; and did.

He got through tolerably well; but his audience broke down early, and stayed in that condition to the end.
The fame of the letter spread through the town.

A brother minister came and borrowed the manuscript, put it bodily into a sermon, preached the sermon to twelve hundred people on a Sunday morning, and the letter drowned them in their own tears.

Then my friend put it into a sermon and went before his Sunday morning congregation with it.