20 OCTOBER 1944, Page 4

Thou g h not as a g eneral rule a stron g believer in

pomp and circumstance, I do stand for the maintenance of certain honoured and historic traditions. As a consequence I applaud unreservedly some observations the Cambridge Review made last week about the University sermon (which the Review reports verbatim each week as aid and comfort to some thousands of country parsons in whose own discourses the salient features of the sermon tend soon by strange coincidence to reappear). University sermons have, I learn, been preached in Great St. Mary since the year 1300. What troubles the Cambridge Review is that the Vice-Chancellor, instead of proceeding from his Lodge to the Senate House (which is oppo- site to St. Mary's House) and thence to the church, accompanied by the preacher and attended by the Esquire Bedells with their maces, now " goes in hugger-mugger to the Senate House." Here essentially is a case for return to the ancient ways. On the other hand, there is one comparatively new way which is very excellent. Out of nine preachers in the present term, one is a Baptist and two Presbyterians. The University pulpit has been thus opened to Free Churchmen only in the last three or four years. * * * *