The Bishop of London has done wisely in vetoing the
litiga- tion proposed as to the reredos at St. Paul's. The question was whether a reredos showing our Lord on the cross in a conspicuous position immediately above the communion-table, and also the Virgin with the child in her arms a few feet above it, has any tendency to tempt to idolatry. The Bishop of London remarks that in an Exeter case it was decided that a figure of our Lord in the act of ascending to heaven, placed above the communion-table, had no tendency to tempt to idolatry, and that there is no sufficient difference between that case and this to render it in the least likely that litiga- tion would do good, while litigation is always irritating and undesirable, unless the end which it is to answer is so important as to outweigh the mischief of the irrita- tion caused. That is very good sense. But we should like to know if any existing Englishman had ever been con- scious of having been tempted to idolatry by seeing any statue whatever. We are confident that we, at least, never heard of such a temptation, or conceived it as possible. English idolatry there no doubt is, in the sense of English worship of ideal character which is certainly not the highest, and which is perhaps even consciously not the highest ; but to such worship surely no Englishman was ever yet tempted by looking at a statue of any kind.
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