We have to thank an Anglican clergyman, the Rev. G. Vale Owen, for the latest description of the Future Life of our species. Impelled by a “gentle, steady but accumulative force” this good man became the unwilling amanuensis of the spirit of his mother and “other friends” and has written a description of the houses, trees, bridges, gardens and people of the other world and their occupations that could scarcely be improved upon by the most imaginative motion-picture photographer, or mechanic or scrub-woman or whoever it may be that writes the scenarios.

We of this world are still, after many thousand years of waiting, eager for the faintest ray of light that may be thrown on the actual conditions of what we call “the world to come,” or as the Spiritists love to say, “behind the veil,” but for the tawdry imaginings of the Reverend Mr. Owen the “Veil” serves only as an opaque screen upon whose surface they flicker grotesquely like the disorderly apparitions of a cinema projection.

As a Seer this reverend gentleman, without for a moment questioning his sincerity, is a failure; his narrative, is childish in its crudity and tedious as a dream told at the breakfast table.

One thing, however, is interesting, and that is to trace as we do, through the transcendental claptrap of “rainbow brides” and white-winged angels and the pseudo-scientific jargon of “planes,” “vibrations,” “spheres,” and “fourth dimension,” the—shall I say humanizing—influence of the cinema.

For the first time we learn that there are bath tubs in the Heavenly Mansions—Bathtubs! With hot and cold water, and Dr. Owen does not stop at bathtubs; he assures us there are also—don’t faint—water nymphs! Can’t you see all Israel clamoring for the picture rights!

Imagine the angelic shade of St. Anthony or Mr. Spurgeon coming unexpectedly upon a school of water nymphs!

And how is this for a motion-picture “fade out”?

“As we knelt the whole summit of the hill seemed to become transparent—we saw right through it and a part of the regions below was brought out with distinctness. The scene we saw was a dry and barren plain in semi-darkness and standing, leaning against a rock, was a man of large stature.”

I strongly suspect that the Reverend Mr. Vale Owen is, like myself (to my shame confess it), a motion-picture fan!