All these things, as I say, the professor had invented; he had invented everything in the flying ship, with the exception, perhaps, of himself. This he had been born too late actually to inaugurate, but he believed at least, that he had considerably improved it.
The novel opens on the sight of Professor Lucifer in his flying machine. The opening paragraph goes on to describe the various tools, apparatuses, gadgets and objects within the ship. The narrator muses on the subject of how science and evolution diverges from the “dream world” of poetry and religion. The professor’s name perhaps hints suggestively at the means by which Lucifer had invented everything in his flying ship, but here is the point at which at which science and poetry collide.
"Catholic virtue is often invisible because it is the normal. Christianity is always out of fashion because it is always sane; and all fashions are mild insanities. When Italy is mad on art the Church seems too Puritanical; when England is mad on Puritanism the Church seems too artistic.”
Shortly after being introduced to the Professor, his flying machine and the short-term trip of one Father Michael before he is deposited atop the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral, the narrative takes a sharp left turn and proceeds at a steady and insistent speed down the path of conflict between two Scots: MacIan who is a believer, and Turnbull who is not.
“You can't be angry with bad men. But a good man in the wrong--why one thirsts for his blood.”
Turnbull shares his Scottish homeland with MacIan, but very little else. At least at first. Turnbull edits an atheist newspaper and is what you might call a cynic, or more precisely perhaps, a realist. Or then again, perhaps Turnbull is what he is: a newspaper man. Many of that type persist in seeing cynicism and pessimism as merely uncomplicated realism. By the end of the show, Turnbull and MacIan have proven to be less antagonistic than they seem and draw closer together to pursue a common purpose. If evil exists in the world, one need not be a true believer like MacIan to accept it and fight against it. Because it turns out that often one man’s evil is another man’s rejection of the right thing.
"It is quite simple. Christ descended into hell; Satan fell into it."
The entire point of the book is to situate the terms for arguing over the nature of good and evil. The name Lucifer pretty much gives that away. But it actually goes a bit deeper than that rather broad-ranging subject. In fact, the inclusion of the word “Cross” in the title is not by mere chance or fancy on the author’s part; it is essential to the delineating of terms for the debate. The author is challenging readers not merely to consider profound questions on the idea of whether evil exists in the world and, if so, how is good to be defined. Turnbull’s query hits the thematic issue on the nail: if Christianity is mere myth without any rational history, how and even why should one bother debating the topic at all.
