His mother's Evangelical training of him, and Mr.Grey's influence, together, perhaps, with certain drifts of temperament, prevented him from becoming a High Churchman.

The sacramental, ceremonial view of the Church never took hold upon him.

But to the English Church as a great national institution for the promotion of God's work on earth no one could have been more deeply loyal, and none coming close to him could mistake the fervor and passion of his Christian feeling.

At the same time he did not know what rancor or bitterness meant, so that men of all shades of Christian belief reckoned a friend in him, and he went through life surrounded by an unusual, perhaps a dangerous, amount of liking and affection.

He threw himself ardently into the charitable work of Oxford, now helping a High Church vicar, and now toiling with Gray and one or two other Liberal fellows, at the maintenance of a coffee-palace and lecture-room just started by them in one of the suburbs; while in the second year of his lectureship the success of some first attempts at preaching fixed the attention of the religious leaders upon him as upon a man certain to make his mark.
So the three years passed--not, perhaps, of great intellectual advance, for other forces in him than those of the intellect were mainly to the fore, but years certainly of continuous growth in character and moral experience.