tended
missionary work in Gaul than Augustine, his contemporary, did in England.
But it is a very different matter when we come to the great off-shoot from
the Irish Church, the vigorous Church whose centre was the island of Hii,
its moving spirit St. Columba. Iona--to adopt the familiar blunder which
makes a _u_ into an _n_ in a name all vowels--Iona did indeed pay back
with a generous hand all and more than all that Ireland had owed to
Britain.

It was in 563 that St. Columba crossed over from Ireland to north Britain,
with the wonted twelve companions. He established himself in the island of
Hii, the Iouan island, now called Iona. In 565 he went to the mainland,
crossed the central ridge of mountains, and made his way to the residence
of the king of the northern Picts, near "the long lake of the river Ness,"
not far from Inverness. Here he found much the same kind of paganism as
Patrick had found in Ireland. The king's priests and wise men, here as in
Ireland, went by the name of Druids, _Magi_ in Latin, and professed to
have influence with the powers of nature. Here he worked for some nine or
ten years with great success, beginning with the defeat of the Druids in
their attempt to prevent his coming, followed soon after by the baptism of
the king, who appears to have been a monarch of great power and wide rule.
Then Columba devoted himself to his island monastery; and it grew under
his hands and those of his immediate successors, till its fame reached all
lands. Columba died in 597, the very year in which Ethelbert was converted
to Christianity. Thirty-seven years after Columba's death, his successors
did that for the Northumbrian Angles which the successors of Augustine had
failed to do.

We shall make a very great mistake if we ridicule or under-rate the power
of the pagan priests, to whom these stories make reference. Classical
mythology treats the gods of Greece and Rome as intensely important
beings: and their priests were dominant. We must assign a like position to
the gods and the priests of our pagan predecessors. When Apollo was
consulted in Diocletian's presence, an answer was given in a hollow
voice, not by the priest, but by Apollo himself, that the oracles were
restrained from answering truly; and the priests said this pointed to the
Christians. And when the entrails of victims were examined in augury on
another of Diocletian's expeditions, and found not to present the wonted
marks, the chief soothsaye