All my religious associations were with the Evangelical school, of which my parents were devoted adherents. My uncle, the Rev. Lord Wriothesley Russell (1804-1886), had been a disciple of Charles Simeon at Cambridge, but had completely discarded such fragments of Churchmanship as lingered in his master's teaching. My mother (1810-1884) had been in early life closely allied with "the Clapham Sect"; and our friendship with the last survivor of that sect, Miss Marianne Thornton (1797-1887), linked us to the Wilberforces, the Venns, and the Macaulays. My acquaintance with Lord Shaftesbury (1801-1885) I have always esteemed one of the chief honours of my life. He combined in a singular degree the gifts which make a Leader. He had an imperious will, a perfervid temper, unbounded enthusiasm, inexhaustible energy. Any movement with which he was connected he controlled. He brooked neither opposition nor criticism. His authority was reinforced by advantages of aspect and station; by a stately manner, by a noble and commanding eloquence. But all these gifts were as nothing when compared with the power of his lifelong consistency. When he was a boy at Harrow, a brutal scene at a pauper's funeral awoke his devotion to the cause of the poor and helpless. Seventy years later, when he lay on his deathbed, his only regret was that he must leave the world with so much misery in it. From first to last, he was an Evangelical of the highest and purest type, displaying all the religious and social virtues of that school in their perfection. Yet he left it on record that he had been more harshly treated by the Evangelical party than by any other. Perhaps the explanation is that those excellent people were only kicking against the pricks of a too-absolute control. Such were the religious associations of my early life; and I am deeply thankful for them. I have found, by much experiment, that there is no foundation on which the superstructure of Catholic religion can be more securely built than on the Evangelical confession of man's utter sinfulness, and of the free pardon purchased by the Blood of Christ. A man trained in that confession may, without sacrificing a jot of his earlier creed, learn to accept all that the Catholic Church teaches about Orders and Sacraments; but to the end he will retain some characteristic marks of his spiritual beginnings. For my own part, I hold with Mr. Gladstone that to label oneself with an ecclesiastical nickname would be to compromise "the first of earthly blessings--one's mental freedom[64]"; but if anyone chose to call me a "Catholic Evangelical," I should not quarrel with the designation.