Historically, then, it is with the introduction of Christianity that Celtic literature first finds its embodiment, and when we consider the condition of continental Europe at the time, this early beginning in the writing of books is quite marvellous. It is to the Church, therefore, in the person of its missionary pioneers, that we owe the initial force that resulted in a written Gaelic literature. In bringing Christianity to bear on the old pagan life and thought of the race, the missionaries effected a reanimation, which brought latent powers into action in a new direction. They furnished the people with fresh ideas, new material for thought, and an entirely changed outlook. The movement, indeed, might be described as the passage from Celtic naturalism to Christian spiritualism. And when we consider what the old paganism really was in many of its features, this emancipation cannot be regarded in any other light than that in which history uniformly regards it, as a salvation of the country, preparing the way for the realisation of all those grand possibilities that lay in the future. With the coming of St. Patrick Ireland entered upon a new epoch, and with the advent of St. Columba the political and literary history of Scotland may be said to have begun. Every credit is due to the Church, therefore, as the importer and originator of a written literature, as well as of a true religion. To it we owe the remarkable arrival of letters which not only tapped a new fountain head, causing a new stream of literary composition to flow, but which also secured for us the preservation and continuance of the old to this day. “Few forms of Christianity,” wrote Renan, “have offered an ideal of Christian perfection so pure as the Celtic Church of the sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries. Nowhere, perhaps, has God been better worshipped in spirit than in those great monastic communities of Hy or Iona, of Bangor, of Clonard, or of Lindisfarne.” And it is this purity of motive and sincerity of purpose that led the early missionaries, in contrast to the obscurantists of later ages, to recognise the high value of literature and use it in the service of religion. In the primitive Celtic Church we find no conflict between the two, such as the sickly piety of some more modern periods has instituted and maintained. Learning and culture were then never regarded as enemies to religion. On the contrary, they were deemed not only helpful, but even indispensable to the progress of Christianity in the land. And they were encouraged as such. They were the most powerful agents for the removal of racial ignorance, superstition, and prejudice. All honour, therefore, to the Church that first kindled the lamp of literature and the love of knowledge in these once dark islands.