Lord of the World

Can a timeless book become timely 100 years after its first appearance?
     In this profound and prescient novel, Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson gives us an imaginative foretelling of the end of the world. All stories, Aristotle said, have a beginning, a middle, and an end, but most ends are relative, the terminus of this chain of acts or that. But what of the end that terminates all human action as we know it, the end of time itself, the Second Coming? Since this novel appeared in 1906, many others have been devoted to nuclear disaster, destructive comets, and other hair-raising possibilities. What sets Benson’s story apart and makes it as readable today as when it was written is the Catholic and biblical context that provides the ultimate meaning.
     Robert Hugh Benson (1871–1914) was the son of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and his conversion to Catholicism caused a stir. He became a great apologist for the faith, in spiritual works as well as in works of the imagination. Lord of the World is first of all a tremendous “read,” but it is also spiritual food for thought.
     The late Ralph McInerny contributed a fine preface to the work, and recently Fr. C. John McCloskey III, a specialist on the work of Robert Hugh Benson, added a fascinating introduction.