There are about 45 churches and chapels and probably 60 parsons and priests in Preston; but unto this hour they have been treated, so far as they are individually concerned, with complete silence.  We purpose remedying the defect, supplying the necessary criticism, and filling up the hiatus.  The whole lot must have either something or nothing in them, must be either useful or useless; parsons must be either sharp or stupid, sensible or foolish; priests must be either learned or illiterate, either good, bad, or indifferent; in all, from the rector in his silken gown to the back street psalm-singer in his fustian, there must be something worth praising or condemning.  And the churches and chapels, with their congregations, must likewise present some points of beauty or ugliness, some traits of grace or godlessness, some features of excellence, dignity, piety, or sham.  There must be either a good deal of gilded gingerbread or a great let of the genuine article, at our places of worship.  But whether there is or there is not, we have decided to say something about the church and the chapel, the parson and the priest, of each district in the town.  This is a mere prologue, and we shall but hint at the general theme “on this occasion.”

Churches and chapels are great institutions in the land.  Nobody knows the exact time when the first was thought of; and it has not yet transpired when the last will be run up.  But this is certain, we are not improving much in the make of them.  The Sunday sanctums and Sabbath conventicles of today may be mere ornate, may be more flashy, and show more symptoms of polished bedizenment in their construction; but three-fourths of them sink into dwarflings and mediocrities when compared with the rare old buildings of the past.  In strength and beauty, in vastness of design and skill of workmanship, in nobility of outline and richness of detail, the religious fabrics of these times fall into insignificance beside their grand old predecessors; and the manner in which they are cut up into patrician and plebeian quarters, into fashionable coteries for the perfumed portion of humanity, and into half-starved benches with the brand of poverty upon them for the poor, is nothing to the credit of anybody.

All the churches and chapels of the land may profess Christianity; but the game of the bulk has a powerful reference to money.  Those who have got the most of the current coin of the realm receive the blandest smile from the parson, the politest nod from the beadle, the promptest attention from that strange mixture of piety and pay called “the chapel-keeper;” those who have not got it must take what they can get, and accept it with Christian resignation, as St. Paul tells them.  This may be all right; we have not said yet that it is wrong; but it looks suspicious, doesn’t it?—­shows that in the arena of conventional Christianity, as in the seething maelstrom of ordinary life, money is the winner.  Our parsons