The Miracles of Antichrist: A NovelLagerlöf, Selma
General
The Miracles of Antichrist: A Novel
Lagerlöf, Selma
Sicily (Italy) -- Fiction; Socialism -- Fiction
Among those who defended the barricade was one man who was not a poor
working-man, but a man of education, who had passed his whole life in
study. He knew all the want that tortured mankind, and his heart was full
of sympathy, so that he continually sought means to better their lot. For
thirty years he had written and thought without finding any remedy. Now
on hearing the alarm bell he had obeyed it and rushed into the streets.
He had seized a weapon and gone with the insurgents with the thought that
the riddle which he had been unable to solve should now be made clear by
violence and force, and that the poor should be able to fight their way
to a better lot.
There he stood the whole day and fought; and people fell about him, blood
splashed up into his face, and the misery of life seemed to him greater
and more deplorable than ever before.
But whenever the smoke cleared away, the little image shone before his
eyes; through all the tumult of the fight it stood unmoved high up on the
barricade.
Every time he saw the image the words “My kingdom is only of this world”
flashed through his brain. At last he thought that the words wrote
themselves in the air and began to wave before his eyes, now in fire, now
in blood, now in smoke.
He stood still. He stood there with gun in hand, but he had stopped
fighting. Suddenly he knew that this was the word that he had sought
after all his life. He knew what he would say to the people, and it was
the poor image that had given him the solution.
He would go out into the whole world and proclaim: “Your kingdom is only
of this world.
“Therefore you must care for this life and live like brothers. And you
shall divide your property so that no one is rich and no one poor. You
shall all work, and the earth shall be owned by all, and you shall all be
equal.
“No one shall hunger, no one shall be tempted to luxury, and no one shall
suffer want in his old age.
“And you must think of increasing every one’s happiness, for there is no
compensation awaiting you. Your kingdom is only of this world.”
All this passed through his brain while he stood on the barricade, and
when the thought became clear to him, he laid down his weapon, and did
not lift it again for strife and the shedding of blood.
A moment later the barricade was stormed and taken. The victorious troops
dashed through and quelled the insurrection, and before night order and
peace reigned in the great city.
The Englishwoman sent out her servants to look for her lost possessions,
and they found many, if not all. What they found first of all on the
captured barricade was the image ejected from Aracoeli.
But the man who had been taught during the fight by the image began to
proclaim to the world a new doctrine, which is called Socialism, but
which is an Antichristianity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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