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Thursday, April 24, 2014

Reading List: Lord of the World

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.

Posted at April 24, 2014 00:27