That seems to me to be a very moving description of somebody who is preaching to people, not from any sense of superiority, but rather from a sense of human concern and caring about the people that she is addressing, and this makes the way in which George Eliot writes about her very different from the way in which other methodist preachers have been described either as ranters, erm or as people who are so caught up in what they are saying themselves that the fail to make any  pay any attention to the people that they are addressing.