There is an unconscious double meaning in the American name given to the novel published in 1914, The Greatest of These, for it can be taken not only in the Pauline significance, but as the greatest of these books we are considering. It is the most ambitious and on the whole the most effective of its author's productions, containing also the essence of his religion—charity contrasted with opinions. We have an illustration of his favourite method of portraying the shade and shine of human character by placing in opposition two leading representatives of two large classes of nominal Christians—a clergyman of the Church of England and a minister of the Dissenters. Mr. Marshall never wrote a better first chapter. The reader is instantly aware that he has in his hands a masterpiece. Every leading character is introduced in the opening chapter either in person or in allusive conversation, and we know that Mr. Marshall has what most novelists seek in vain—a real plot. This book, which eventually rises to the highest spiritual altitude at[46]tained thus far by its author, begins on a note of sordid sex-tragedy, as unusual in the stories of Mr. Marshall as a picture like the Price household is in the work of Jane Austen; here it serves to bring forward the forthright and self-satisfied Anglican, who little dreams of his approaching humiliation; he is brought into conflict with a kind of Zeal-of-the-land Busy, whose aggressive self-righteousness is to be softened by the very man who he hoped would harden it. Here too, as in Exton Manor, we come as near as we ever come in Mr. Marshall's books to meeting a villain—in each case it is a woman with a serpent's tongue.  
The time-element in The Greatest of These is managed with consummate skill. So far as the novel has a hero, it is the Rev. Dr. Merrow. He does not appear in Roding until the one-hundred-and-sixty-third page, but there is so much talk, for and against him, that the reader awaits his arrival at the railway station with fully as much eagerness as any of the village gossips. And then, owing to the Doctor's fatigue from the journey, the reader is as baffled as the parishioners. It is quite impossible to discover what manner of man he is. The author refuses to help us, preferring to let[47] his leading character reveal himself without any manipulation behind the scenes. This revelation is gradual, made up of many little details of speech and behaviour, as it would be in real life.
 
But although the personality of the man is not clear until more than half of the book has passed, the ninth chapter, which shows him in action in London as a public institution, is one of the most powerful pieces of prose Mr. Marshall has ever composed. He writes as if inspired by the theme. Not only is it a magnificent description of a great occasion, its dramatic power is immensely heightened because we see it through the eyes of a young ritualist, to whom it is as strange—and at first as repellent—as some vulgar heathen observance. But gradually distaste changes to interest, and interest to enthusiasm. Such passages as the following are entirely unlike the ordinary current of Mr. Marshall's style, but it is a proof that he can reach the heights when the occasion calls.
 
There came more of these sentences. The spark had caught; the furnace was beginning to glow. George gazed at the preacher with his own face alight. His surroundings were forgotten.... If this was the[48] kind of preaching that had brought ............