- Benson, Robert Hugh.
Lord of the World.
Seattle: CreateSpace, [1907] 2013.
ISBN 978-1-4841-2706-3.
-
In the early years of the 21st century, humanism and secularism
are ascendant in Europe. Many churches exist only as monuments
to the past, and mainstream religions are hæmorrhaging
adherents—only the Roman Catholic church remains moored
to its traditions, and its influence is largely confined to Rome
and Ireland. A European Parliament is asserting its power over
formerly sovereign nations, and people seem resigned to losing their
national identity. Old-age pensions and the extension of welfare
benefits to those displaced from jobs in occupations which have
become obsolete create a voting bloc guaranteed to support those
who pay these benefits. The loss of belief in an eternal soul
has cheapened human life, and euthanasia has become accepted,
both for the gravely ill and injured, but also for those just
weary of life.
This novel was published in 1907.
G. K. Chesterton is reputed to have said
“When Man ceases to worship God he does not
worship nothing but worships everything.”
I say “reputed” because there is
no evidence
whatsoever he actually said this, although he said
a number of other things which might be conflated into a
similar statement. This dystopian novel illustrates how
a society which has “moved on” from God toward
a celebration of Humanity as deity is vulnerable to a
charismatic figure who bears the eschaton in his hands.
It is simply stunning how the author, without any knowledge
of the great convulsions which were to ensue in the 20th
century, so precisely forecast the humanistic spiritual
desert of the 21st.
This is a novel of the coming of the Antichrist and the battle
between the remnant of believers and coercive secularism
reinforced by an emerging pagan cult satisfying our human thirst
for transcendence. What is masterful about it is that while
religious themes deeply underly it, if you simply ignore all
of them, it is a thriller with deep philosophical roots. We
live today in a time when religion is under unprecedented assault
by humanism, and the threat to the sanctity of life has gone far
beyond the imagination of the author.
This novel was written more than a century ago, but is set in our
times and could not be more relevant to our present circumstances.
How often has a work of dystopian science fiction been cited by the
Supreme
Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church? Contemporary readers
may find some of the untranslated citations from the Latin Mass
obscure: that's what your search engine exists to illumine.
This work is in the public domain, and a number of print and electronic
editions are available. I read this
Kindle edition
because it was (and is, at this writing) free. The formatting is less
than perfect, but it is perfectly readable. A free electronic
edition in a variety of formats can be
downloaded from
Project Gutenberg.
April 2014 