THE Bishop of London [Dr A. F. Winnington-Ingram], acting most assuredly within his rights, has prohibited the performance of a mystery play, "The Mystery of the Epiphany", in the Church of St Silas the Martyr, Kentish Town. His lordship considers it to be undesirable that plays should be acted in churches. In holding that opinion he differs from the Bishop of Southampton, whose view is that only in a church should pictorial and dramatic representations of sacred incidents in the life of Christ be made. With this latter view we ourselves incline to agree, provided, of course, that there be no payment for seats and none of the commercial details which, though less open to objection in the case of a secular building, are completely out of harmony with what should be an act of worship and, as it were, a scenic sermon. But if the Bishop of London desires that dramatic representation shall not be made in his diocese, there is nothing for us but to submit to his authority, save that we hope we may be permitted to express a little surprise that the strange and sensational performances for which the Church of St Mary-at-Hill is notorious are apparently innocuous, while a reverent dramatic representation of the Mystery of the Epiphany is objectionable. The same remark applies also to his lordship's prohibition of some other rites and ceremonies - the Veneration of the Cross, the Blessing of Ashes, and the Palm Sunday observances. These seem to us, to say the very least, more definitely religious than an egg-service, for example, and a magic-lantern show of the Boat Race as a subject for meditation.

[The Boat Race, whose date had just been changed from the Wednesday in Holy Week after protests by the clergy, was the subject of a separate comment.]