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 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 kind of preaching that had brought Dr. Merrow his great reputation, then he understood its appeal, and was himself moved by it. It came from something beyond creeds, far beyond differences in methods of worship. It had been heard in all ages of the Church, amidst the splendours of mediæval superstition, as in the crude barrenness of modern revivalism. The spirit moved on the face of the waters; the stagnancy of mere words was broken; there was life and healing in them.