To bring our question home, what were the religious belief and worship of the Irish Celts while still pagans? Very few positive facts are known on the subject; but we have data enough to show what they were not; and in such cases negative proofs are amply sufficient. It was for a long time the fashion with Irish historians to attribute to their ancestors the wildest forms of ancient idolatry. They appeared to consider it a point of national honor to make the worship of Erin an exact reflex of Eastern, Grecian, or Roman polytheism. They erected on the slightest foundations grand structures of superstitious and abominable rites. Fire- worship, Phoenician or African horrors, the rankest idol-worship, even human sacrifices of the most revolting nature, were, according to them, of almost daily occurrence in Ireland. But, with the advancement of antiquarian knowledge, all those phantoms have successively disappeared; and, the more the ancient customs, literature, and history of the island are studied, the more it becomes clear that the pretended proofs adduced in support of those vagaries are really without foundation. In the first place, there is not the slightest reason to believe that the human sacrifices customary in Gaul were ever practised in Ireland. No really ancient book makes any mention of them. They were certainly not in vogue at the time of St. Patrick, as he could not have failed to give expression to his horror at them in some shape or form, which expression would have been recorded in one, at least, of the many lives of the saint, written shortly after his death, and abounding in details of every kind. If not, then, during his long apostleship, we may safely conclude that they never took place before, as there was no reason for their discontinuance prior to the propagation of Christianity.