But monastic Christianity, ever on its guard against nature, was constantly seeking after the strange and paradoxical. For it, abstinence was worth more than enjoyment, happiness must be sought in its opposite. And so there sprung up afresh, this time a more blind and uncompromising orthodox antagonism to the early paganism and all its creations. The Dialogues between Ossian and Patrick are our witness. These, while professing to bring the spirit of paganism and of early Christianity together in the person of the last great representative of the one and the first of the other, were evidently the work of monkish scribes in the twelfth century or earlier, and they throw a significant sidelight on the situation. In reality they reflect the posture of affairs, not as it was in the early days when Christianity was first introduced, but as it existed later, when ecclesiastical doctrines had taken on their more lurid, medieval colour. In form and setting the Dialogues are the nearest approach to a drama that the Gael has ever produced. And Miss Hull thinks that they were designed simply to popularise the ancient tales. But such a view seems to us to miss the whole aim and point of these compositions, which are clearly the undisguised result of a reaction,—nay, even revolt in the minds of thoughtful and patriotic men, monks or clerics or laymen, against the narrow and captious spirit that can see no good in any form of natural life and religion other than the contracted faith in which it was itself reared. Evidently the Church had descended from the high level of faith and policy it had maintained in the days of St. Patrick and St. Columba, and measures which the latter had found necessary as temporary expedients till the need for them had vanished, smaller minds had elevated into principles; and even the simple tenets of Christianity they had distorted by casting them into an ecclesiastical mould, and opposing them to the most natural instincts and enthusiasms of the human heart. The writers of the Dialogues, we can see, are thoroughly in earnest, and not sparing in their irony and banter of the grim theology which found no place for the natural virtues of the Celts, or for the story of the dreams and ideals of a thousand years. A mocking, derisive humour runs through these pieces, but the humour is all on one side. There can be no mistaking the sympathies of the writers, who themselves are intellectually emancipated from the narrow tenets and intolerant spirit that would consign the heroes without reflection and without scruple to endless pain. In these Dialogues paganism at its best is brought face to face with ecclesiastical Christianity, and is made to appear more just, more humane, and desirable in every way.