The legends which have grown out of a few mystical texts of Scripture, amplified by the fanciful disquisitions of the theological writers, place St. Michael before us in three great characters:—1. As captain of the heavenly host, and conqueror of the powers of hell. 2. As lord of souls, conductor and guardian of the spirits of the dead. 3. As patron saint and prince of the Church Militant. * * * * * When Lucifer, possessed by the spirit of pride and ingratitude, refused to fall down and worship the Son of man, Michael was deputed to punish his insolence, and to cast him out from heaven. Then Michael chained the revolted angels in middle air, where they are to remain till the day of judgment, being in the mean time perpetually tortured by hate, envy, and despair: for they behold man, whom they had disdained, exalted as their superior; above them they see the heaven they have forfeited; and beneath them the redeemed souls continually rising from earth, and ascending to the presence of God, whence they are shut out for ever. ‘Now,’ says the old Legend,[63] ‘if it be asked wherefore the books of Moses, in revealing the disobedience and the fall of man, are silent as to the revolt and the fall of the angels, the reason is plain; and in this God acted according to his wisdom. For, let us suppose that a certain powerful lord hath two vassals, both guilty of the crime of treason, and one of these is a nobleman of pure and lofty lineage, and the other a base-born churl:—what doth this lord? He hangs up the churl in the market-place as a warning and example to others;—but, for the nobleman, fearing the scandal that may arise among the people, and perhaps also some insult to the officers of the law, the judge causes him to be tried secretly, and shuts him up in a dungeon; and when judgment is pronounced against him, he sends to his prison, and puts him privily to death; and when one asketh after him, the answer is only “He is dead:”—and nothing more. Thus did God in respect to the rebel angels of old; and their fate was not revealed until the redemption of man was accomplished.’ This passage from the old Italian legend is so curiously characteristic of the feudal spirit of Christianity in the middle ages, that I have ventured to insert it verbatim. If religion did, in some degree, modify the institutions of chivalry, in a much greater degree did the ruling prejudices of a barbarian age modify the popular ideas of religion. Here, notwithstanding the primary doctrine of Christ—the equality of all men before God, we have the distinction between noble and churl carried into the very councils of Heaven. But, to return to St. Michael: on whom, as the leader of his triumphant hosts, God bestowed many and great privileges. To him it was given to bid sound th’ archangel trumpet,