Lord Of The World

by Robert Hugh Benson

Overview

Described by Fulton Sheen as one of the three greatest depictions of the advent of the demonic in world literature, Lord of the World is science fiction with a difference. The West has succumbed to a sort of international socialism. The forces of secular materialism, relativism and state control are everywhere triumphant. Protestantism is no more, and Catholicism - which had made some major advances in the first half of the twentieth century - has been devastated by the development of new psychologies and the exodus of intellectuals in the wake of an Ecumenical Council. Euthanasia has become an instrument of the state, Esperanto the universal second language. Nevertheless, although organised religion has largely collapsed in the face of institutional secularism, a vague, humanistic religiosity - militantly hostile to the exclusive and supernatural claims of the Church - is present everywhere. Finally, the East, which has amalgamated into a single, pantheistic bloc, continues to pose a military threat. Enter Julian Felsenberg - diplomat, scholar, guru, Antichrist...

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781480044470
Publisher:	CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date:	01/27/2013
Pages:	378
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.78(d)

Read an Excerpt

BOOK III—THE VICTORY CHAPTER I The little room where the new Pope sat reading was a model of simplicity. Its walls were whitewashed, its roof unpolished rafters, and its floor beaten mud. A square table stood in the centre, with a chair beside it; a cold brazier laid for lighting, stood in the wide hearth; a bookshelf against the wall held a dozen volumes. There were three doors, one leading to the private oratory, one to the anteroom, and the third to the little paved court. The south windows were shuttered, but through the ill-fitting hinges streamed knife-blades of fiery light from the hot Eastern day outside. It was the time of the mid-day siesta, and except for the brisk scything of the cicade from the hill-slope behind the house, all was in deep silence. The Pope, who had dined an hour before, had hardly shifted His attitude in all that time, so intent was He upon His reading. For the while, all was put away, His own memory of those last three months, the bitter anxiety, the intolerable load of responsibility. The book He held was a cheap reprint of the famous biography of Julian Felsenburgh, issued a month before, and He was now drawing to an end. It was a terse, well-written book, composed by an unknown hand, and some even suspected it to be the disguised work of Felsenburgh himself. More, however, considered that it was written at least with Felsenburgh's consent by one of that small body of intimates whom he had admitted to his society—that body which under him now conducted the affairs of West and East. From certain indications in the book it had been argued that its actual writer was a Westerner. The main body of the work dealt with his life, or rather withthose two or three years known to the world, from his rapid rise in American politics and his m...

Table of Contents

Preface     vii
Preface to the original edition     xi
Prologue     1
The Advent     15
The Encounter     101
The Victory     245