Pulpit appeals, I am given to understand, are sometimes very personal.
Since writing the above I have seen a newspaper notice of a dramatic performance in the Ethical Church, Queen's Road, Bayswater, London.
The Ethical Church believes "in everything that makes life sweet and human" and the management state that they believe--"the best trend of dramatic opinion to-day points not only to the transformation of theaters into centers of social enlightenment and moral elevation, but also to the transformation of the churches into centers for the imaginative presentation, by means of all the arts combined, of the deeper truths and meanings of life." Personally, I do not know anything about this society, but surely there is nothing out of harmony with Christianity in these professions, and I am glad to find here an alliance between the two greatest factors in the development of Western thought and culture--the church and the theater.

The newspaper article to which I have referred was describing the "old morality play, Everyman" which had been performed in the church.

The visitor who was somewhat critical, and apparently unused to seeing the theater in a church, wrote of the performance thus: "Both the music and the dressing of the play were perfect, and from the moment that Death entered clad in blue stuff with immense blue wings upon his shoulders, and the trump in his hand, and stopped Everyman, a gorgeous figure in crimson robes and jewelled turban, with the question, 'Who goes so gaily by ?' the play was performed with an impressiveness that never faltered.
"The heaviest burden, of course, falls on Everyman, and the artist who played this part seemed to me, though I am no dramatic critic, to have caught the atmosphere and the spirit of the play.

His performance, indeed, was very wonderful from the moment when he offers Death a thousand boons if only the dread summons may be delayed, to that final tense scene, when, stripped of his outer robe, he says his closing prayers, hesitates for a moment to turn back, though the dread angel is there by his side, and then follows the beckoning hand of Good Deeds, a figure splendidly robed in flowing draperies of crimson and with a wonderfully expressive mobile face.
"At the conclusion of the play Dr.Stanton Colt addressed a few words to the enthusiastic audience, 'Forsake thy pride, for it will profit thee nothing,' he quoted, 'If we could but remember this more carefully and also the fact that nothing save our good deeds shall ever go with us into that other World, surely it would help us to a holier and better life.

Earthly things have their place and should have a due regard paid to them, but we must not forget the jewel of our souls.'" I have, of course, heard of the "Passion Play" at Oberammergau in Germany where the life of Jesus Christ is periodically represented on the stage, but I say nothing about this, for, so far as I know, it is not performed in America, and I have not seen it; but I may note in passing that in China theaters are generally associated with the gods in the temples, and that the moral the play is meant to teach is always well driven home into the minds of the audience.