‘Lord of the World’ has arrived just in time to be contemporary. Quite punctual. I make out from internal evidence that its time is of the present moment. Written in 1907 the classic trope of ‘100 years hence’ or thereabouts is operative and we can currently see its dystopian nightmare from which we are trying to awake. Genocide is being live streamed with soldiers trying on the lingerie of commandeered houses. The plain of Megiddo would be a nice place to try a nuclear bomb solution when all seems lost.
So much for the reality what about the book? The ‘Lord of the World’ is of course the Antichrist, a word which is never used. You must decide. Is Julian Felsenburgh an agent empowered by Old Nick or the sulphurous one himself? But he is bringing peace and global unity, can that be bad? When the book opens we are brought up to speed on the developments that have led to the ripeness of this vile fruit. It’s complicated but when you break it down it’s really very simple.
“And America?” asked Percy.
“Ah! all that is very complicated. But she knew her strength and annexed Canada the same year. That was when we were at our weakest.”
The prediction of tom foolery of the 21st. century seems right:
“It is all much simpler, certainly,” he murmured, glancing first at the old complicated colouring of the beginning of the twentieth century, and then at the three great washes of the twenty-first.
He moved his finger along Asia. The words EASTERN EMPIRE ran across the pale yellow, from the Ural Mountains on the left to the Behring Straits on the right, curling round in giant letters through India, Australia, and New Zealand. He glanced at the red; it was considerably smaller, but still important enough, considering that it covered not only Europe proper, but all Russia up to the Ural Mountains, and Africa to the south. The blue-labelled AMERICAN REPUBLIC swept over the whole of that continent, and disappeared right round to the left of the Western Hemisphere in a shower of blue sparks on the white sea.
All of these elements are at war or about to go to war. Things are in a bad way but then Felsenburgh arrives, an obscure American senator preaching to all nations in their own languages moving from one place to another in an uncanny way. Where will he pop up next? Is he the Prince of Peace? It certainly seems so. The ecstatic audiences want to make him their leader, falling down before him. Eventually he does become the President of Europe but that is merely a placeholding position. He is in fact the Lord of the World. We don’t mention his other title. We never speak of the devil.
What of the state of religion, the force that should be resisting the neat solutions of the Tempter?
“Briefly,” he said, “there are three forces—Catholicism, Humanitarianism, and the Eastern religions. About the third I cannot prophesy, though I think the Sufis will be victorious. Anything may happen; Esotericism is making enormous strides—and that means Pantheism; and the blending of the Chinese and Japanese dynasties throws out all our calculations. But in Europe and America, there is no doubt that the struggle lies between the other two. We can neglect everything else. And, I think, if you wish me to say what I think, that, humanly speaking, Catholicism will decrease rapidly now. It is perfectly true that Protestantism is dead. Men do recognise at last that a supernatural Religion involves an absolute authority, and that Private Judgment in matters of faith is nothing else than the beginning of disintegration.
So there we are. We see that there is a good deal of coincidence with out present condition. But there, in the world of the book, how is the demonic power applied to its characters? The Brand family, Oliver a government minister, his wife Mabel, and Brand’s mother ailing and in her latter days turning back to the Catholicism of her childhood. The priest that is sent for to administer Extreme Unction is Percy Franklin. Such is the central character nexus of the book.
Father Percy is even moved by the power of Felsenburgh.
Gradually he became aware that this crowd was as no other that he had ever seen. To his psychical sense it seemed to him that it possessed a unity unlike any other. There was magnetism in the air. There was a sensation as if a creative act were in process, whereby thousands of individual cells were being welded more and more perfectly every instant into one huge sentient being with one will, one emotion, and one head. The crying of voices seemed significant only as the stirrings of this creative power which so expressed itself. Here rested this giant humanity, stretching to his sight in living limbs so far as he could see on every side, waiting, waiting for some consummation—stretching, too, as his tired brain began to guess, down every thoroughfare of the vast city.
You will gather that the theological element is dominant for after all the wastes of history it comes to the final battle of good versus evil. Man as the measure of all things is inadequate as a rule. Those ‘inches’ are paltry, trifling, puny, tabid faced with the dimension of eternal malignity of infinite shape.
Along with many nice gadget touches, apps even, rubber roads, asbestos furniture, volors flitting like silver fish there is continuity with our past and a reach forward in a morally credible way. The minister of euthanasia are on hand when a volor crashes. The right to die is a protected one with an eight day waiting period in a genteel rest home if that is what you want. All very rational.
Add this book to your Orwell and your Huxley. You are worth it. Time is short.
