4 MARCH 1938, Page 23

MASS AND COMMUNION

[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]

Sta,—Permit me to protest against Miss Rose Macaulay's assumption that Mass and Communion-Service seem to most people names for the same thing. So rash an opinion can only be ascribed to ignorance or levity, and in Miss Macaulay's case the first alternative must be excluded. Persons of education know very well what the difference is. Tennyson, whose intellectual eminence, I presume, is still admitted, has pithily expressed it in lines put into Cratumer's mouth, to which in the last year of his life he affirmed his adherence : " It is but a communion, not a mass ; No sacrifice but a life-giving feast."

All the difference in the world !—Yours faithfully,