Robert Hugh Benson - Lord of the World

I n 2001 (surely not on 9/11!), St. Augustines Press published a new edition of Robert Hugh Bensons 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 thisa few more decades of life and then a total void.

This novel is remarkably similar in theme to Benedicts 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 (Augustines) 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.