The calendar of the canonised has come in handy for the christening of churches.  Without it, we might have indulged in a poor and prosaic nomenclature; with it, the dullest, as well as the finest, architecture can get into the company of the beatified.  Barring a few places, all our churches are associated with some particular saint; every edifice has cultivated the acquaintance of at least one; but that we have now to notice has made a direct move into the general constellation, and is dedicated to the aggregate body.  We believe that in church-naming, as in common life, “All is for the best,” and we commend, rather than censure, the judgment which recognised the full complement of saints when All Saints’ was consecrated.  A man maybe wrong in fixing upon one name, or upon fifty, or fifty hundred, but if he agglomerates the entire mass, condenses every name into one, and gives something respectable that particular name, he won’t be far off the equinoctial of exactness.  In this sense, the christeners of All Saints’ were wise; they went in for the posse comitatus of saints—­backed the favourites as well as “the field”—­and their scheme, so far as naming goes, must win.  There is, however, not much in a name, and less in a reverie of speculative comment, so we will descend to a lower, yet, perhaps, more healthy, atmosphere.

In 1841, the Rev. W. Walling, son of a yeoman living is Silverdale—­ one of the prettiest places we know of in the North of England—­came to Preston, as minister of St. James’s Church.  He stayed at the place for about a year, then went to Carlton, in Nottinghamshire, and afterwards to Whitby.  Mr. Walling was a man of quiet disposition; during his stay in Preston he was exceedingly well liked; and when he left the town, a vacuum seemed to have been created.  He was a missed man; his value was not found out until he had gone; and it was determined—­mainly amongst a pious, enthusiastic section of working people—­to get him back again if possible.  And they went about the business like sensible people—­ decided not to root out his predecessor at St. James’s, nor to exterminate any of the sundry clerical beings in other parts of the town, but to build him a new church.  They were only poor men; but they persevered; and in a short time their movement took a distinct shape, and the building, whose erection they had in view, was prospectively called “The Poor Man’s Church.”  In time they raised about 200 pounds; but a sum like that goes only a little way in church building—­sometimes doesn’t cover those very refreshing things which contractors call “extras;” a number of wealthier men, who appreciated the earnestness of the original promoters, and saw the necessity, of such a church as they contemplated, came to the rescue, and what they and divers friends gave justified a start, on a plot of land between Walker-street and Elizabeth-street.  On the 21st of September, 1846, the foundation-stone of the church—­All