 Lang 's career ambition from early in life was to practise law , enter politics and then take office in some future Conservative administration . In 1887 he began his studies for the English Bar , working in the London chambers of W.S. Robson , a future Attorney @-@ General , whose " vehement radicalism was an admirable stimulus and corrective to [ Lang 's ] liberal Conservatism " . During these years Lang was largely aloof from religion , but continued churchgoing out of what he termed " hereditary respect " . He attended services at the nonconformist City Temple church and sometimes went to St Paul 's Cathedral . Of his life at that time he said : " I must confess that I played sometimes with those external temptations that our Christian London flaunts in the face of its young men . " 
