Section 156. No person shall in a city occupy or use a building for a livery stable, or a stable for taking or keeping horses and carriages for hire or to let, within two hundred feet of a church or meeting house erected and used for the public worship of God, without the written consent of the religious society or parish worshipping therein; but this section shall not prevent such occupation and use if authorized by law on May seventeenth, eighteen hundred and ninety-one, to the extent then authorized.