Lord of the World

Hugh Benson Robert

Description

It is a world seemingly without conflict. There are no battles, no religion. Imagine!And yet, all is not well. There is a war going on. The godlessness of the world, disguised in comfortable Humanism, gnaws at the minds and souls of the people. Euthanasia is rampant, a way to escape a sterile and meaningless world. Only the ghettoized, underground Catholic Church and its few remaining adherents struggle to keep Christianity alive. Pushed to the edges of society, their biggest and most important conflict comes in the form of Julian Felsenburgh, the leader of the new world order . . . and an Anti-Christ. It is left to Father Percy Franklin and the small band of remaining Catholics to fight this, perhaps, final battle of Good vs. Evil; Christ vs. Anti-Christ. Written more than 100 years ago, Lord of the World remains just as profound today as it did when it was first published.

Sujets

• Catholic Church

Informations

• Publié par: TAN Books
• Date de parution: 24 avril 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781505109269
• Langue: English

Extrait

Lord
of the
World
Lord
of the
World
ROBERT HUGH BENSON

TAN Books Charlotte, North Carolina
First Published in 1907
TAN edition © 2016 TAN Books
Retypeset by TAN Books in 2016. The type in this book is the property of TAN Books and may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without written permission from the publisher.
Foreword by James V. Schall, S.J., copyright © 2016 TAN Books.
Cover design by David Ferris www.davidferrisdesigns.com
ISBN: 978-1-5051-0925-2
Published in the United States by TAN Books P. O. Box 410487 Charlotte, NC 28241 www.TANBooks.com
Printed in the United States of America
Dedication CLAVI DOMUS DAVID
CONTENTS
Foreword
Preface
Prologue
BOOK I—The Advent
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
BOOK II—The Encounter
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
BOOK III—The Victory
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
FOREWORD
I n 2001 (surely not on 9/11!), St. Augustine’s Press published a new edition of Robert Hugh Benson’s 1907 novel, The Lord of the World . I had never read it. A friend of mine in Vermont urged me to read it, and so I did. And, now, I have the pleasure to introduce a new generation of readers to this wonderful book.
The late Ralph McInerny, in a brief introduction to that edition, writes: “The novel wonderfully conveys the flatness and boredom of a world without God. Boredom becomes a condition for recognizing our need for something more than this—a few more decades of life and then a total void.”
This novel is remarkably similar in theme to Benedict’s encyclical Spe Salvi , one of the very great encyclicals. That is, the novel is about the futility of a this-worldly utopia with the instruments of death (abortion, euthanasia) and endless “life” (prolongation of life, cloning) that are designed to make it come about. Indeed, in a lecture he gave at the Catholic University in Milan on February 6, 1992, Joseph Ratzinger cited The Lord of the World and the deadly Universalist, inner-world atmosphere it depicted.
My father had this Benson novel around the house when I was a boy in Iowa. I remember reading it. What I remember most about it was how frightening it was to me with its vivid end-of-the world description. Indeed, I have often said that this novel and C. S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength are the most frightening books that I have ever read. Now, no longer a youth and then some, when I ask myself why this fright, it is because both books make the this-worldly triumph of evil so plausible, so intellectual, so logical.
Both books seem to exemplify the validity of a remark of Herbert Deane in his book on Augustine: “As history draws to its close, the number of true Christians in the world will decline rather than increase. His (Augustine’s) words give no support to the hope that the world will gradually be brought to belief in Christ and that earthly society can be transformed, step by step, into the kingdom of God”. The anti-Christ figure in The Lord of the World becomes the “Man-God,” the “Lord of the World,” precisely by promising universal brotherhood, peace, and love, but no transcendence.
The hero of the book is an English priest, Percy Franklin, who looks almost exactly like the mysterious Julian Felsenburgh, who is an American senator from, yes, Vermont. Felsenburgh suddenly appears as a lone and dramatic figure promising the world goodness if it but follow him. No one quite knows who he is or where he is from, but his voice mesmerizes. Under his leadership, East and West join. War is abolished. Felsenburgh becomes the President of Europe, then of the World, by popular acclaim. Everyone is fascinated by him. Still no one knows much about him. People are both riveted and frightened by the way he demands attention. Most follow without question.
The only people who oppose him in any way are the few loyal Catholics. These two adjectives beg the question. When and if times of persecution come, will you and I be counted among the few and the loyal? Can we be so counted today?
The last words of the novel are … well, you have it in your hands. Continue reading and you will find out. Rest assured, however, that they could not be more dramatic, or more moving. Somehow, I no longer find those words so frightening. Rather, they are almost consoling.
James V. Schall, S.J. Santa Clara, 2016
This foreword is an edited and adapted version of a longer essay which first appeared on the website www.insidecatholic.com on March 9, 2009.
PREFACE
I AM perfectly aware that this is a terribly sensational book, and open to innumerable criticisms on that account, as well as on many others. But I did not know how else to express the principles I desired (and which I passionately believe to be true) except by producing their lines to a sensational point. I have tried, however, not to scream unduly loud, and to retain, so far as possible, reverence and consideration for the opinions of other people. Whether I have succeeded in that attempt is quite another matter.
Robert Hugh Benson Cambridge, 1907.
P ERSONS WHO DO not like tiresome prologues, need not read this one. It is essential only to the situation, not to the story.
R.H.B .
PROLOGUE
“ Y OU MUST give me a moment,” said the old man, leaning back.
Percy resettled himself in his chair and waited, chin on hand.
It was a very silent room in which the three men sat, furnished with the extreme common sense of the period. It had neither window nor door; for it was now sixty years since the world, recognising that space is not confined to the surface of the globe, had begun to burrow in earnest. Old Mr. Templeton’s house stood some forty feet below the level of the Thames embankment, in what was considered a somewhat commodious position, for he had only a hundred yards to walk before he reached the station of the Second Central Motor-circle, and a quarter of a mile to the volor-station at Blackfriars. He was over ninety years old, however, and seldom left his house now. The room itself was lined throughout with the delicate green jade-enamel prescribed by the Board of Health, and was suffused with the artificial sunlight discovered by the great Reuter forty years before; it had the colour-tone of a spring wood, and was warmed and ventilated through the classical frieze grating to the exact temperature of 18° Centigrade. Mr. Templeton was a plain man, content to live as his father had lived before him. The furniture, too, was a little old-fashioned in make and design, constructed however according to the prevailing system of soft asbestos enamel welded over iron, indestructible, pleasant to the touch, and resembling mahogany. A couple of book-cases well filled ran on either side of the bronze pedestal electric fire before which sat the three men; and in the further corners stood the hydraulic lifts that gave entrance, the one to the bedroom, the other to the corridor fifty feet up which opened on to the Embankment.
Father Percy Franklin, the elder of the two priests, was rather a remarkable-looking man, not more than thirty-five years old, but with hair that was white throughout; his grey eyes, under black eyebrows, were peculiarly bright and almost passionate but his prominent nose and chin and the extreme decisiveness of his mouth reassured the observer as to his will. Strangers usually looked twice at him.
Father Francis, however, sitting in his upright chair on the other side of the hearth, brought down the average; for, though his brown eyes were pleasant and pathetic, there was no strength in his face; there was even a tendency to feminine melancholy in the corners of his mouth and the marked droop of his eyelids.
Mr. Templeton was just a very old man, with a strong face in folds, clean-shaven like the rest of the world, and was now lying back on his water-pillows with the quilt over his feet.
At last he spoke, glancing first at Percy, on his left.
“Well,” he said, “it is a great business to remember exactly; but this is how I put it to myself.”
“In England our party was first seriously alarmed at the Labour Parliament of 1917. That showed us how deeply Hervéism had impregnated the whole social atmosphere. There had been Socialists before, but none like Gustave Hervé in his old age—at least no one of the same power. He, perhaps you have read, taught absolute Materialism and Socialism developed to their logical issues. Patriotism, he said, was a relic of barbarism; and sensual enjoyment was the only certain good. Of course, every one laughed at him. It was said that without religion there could be no adequate motive among the masses for even the simplest social order. But he was right, it seemed. After the fall of the French Church at the beginning of the century and the massacres of 1914, the bourgeoisie settled down to organise itself; and that extraordinary movement began in earnest, pushed through by the middle classes, with no patriotism, no class distinctions, practically no army. Of course, Freemasonry directed it all. This spread to Germany, where the influence of Karl Marx had already——”
“Yes, sir,” put in Percy smoothly, “but what of England, if you don’t mind——”
“Ah, yes; England. Well, in 1917 the Labour Party gathered up the reins, and Communism really began. That was long before I can remember, of course, but my father used to date it from then. The only wonder was that things did not go forward more quickly; but I suppose there was a good deal of Tory leaven left. Besides, centuries generally run slower than is expected, especially after beginning with an impulse. But the new order began then; and the Communists have never suffered a serious reverse since, except the little one in ’25. Blenkin founded ‘The New People’ then; and the ‘Times’ dropped out; but it was not, strangely enough, till ’35 that the House of Lords fell for the last time. The