Nearly all writers agree that in Scotland, and particularly in the Highlands of Scotland, we were a savage and barbarous people, until Columba changed our hearts. Yet how tolerantly we received Columba, though he walked amongst us as an open perverter of our Druidic faith. Our Druids disputed with him, but offered him no hurt. King Brude at Inverness even confirmed him in his possession of Iona. Were these northern folk so civilised that they could not see in Columba the emissary of a new power in church and state that should finally usurp and destroy their own power?

In a word, I was prepared to be prejudiced to the hilt against Columba. But, unfortunately, Iona is the last place in the world to help a prejudice. If one doesn’t forget it, at least one cannot be bothered with it for the moment, not in the rain, in the soft air. Presently, perhaps, should some loud-voiced person be filled with Iouan unction.

For one can also see that other half of Columba’s character, the affectionate part, full of warmth and understanding. It had the nobility from which, perhaps, all his restless energy received direction. Tolerance, temperance, kindness, simplicity, obedience, forgiveness—we know the rules that governed their lives; but, above all, from their religion they got the conception of charity, of love. It is the ancient goodness of the human heart, the primordial goodness. And a religion that enshrines it will always persist. Those who have this goodness in them are aware of life in the same way as they are aware of light. Truly, life itself is an inner light.

And, at its best, it is a universal light. Columba loved the birds, and the white horse that carried the farm produce bore Columba a special affection. Indeed, as Adamnan relates in his Life of St. Columba (written at Iona towards the end of the seventh century), the white horse wept on taking leave of its dying master. Which may be an exaggeration of the truth; but still—of the truth. And that wise and scholarly men of his age believed it to be the simple truth shows at least what they wanted to believe. Which is the essence of the matter. Beyond miracle and morality and theology, they desired this goodness. And kings and priests and murderers and perverts of all kinds went to Columba in Iona to find again the peace of that goodness.

The most remarkable thing I discovered in Adamnan’s remarkable record is this preoccupation with light as the manifestation or symbol of this goodness. The miracles are the light in legendary form. And many of them—particularly those relating to prevision or ‘second sight’—may not be so legendary as all that.

The simplest and perhaps the best expression of this conjunction of light and goodness may be found in the story of that which happened to the brethren on their return to the monastery after toiling all day in the fields on the west side of the island. When half-way home with their burdens, each had felt within him ‘something wonderful and unusual’ but had not cared to confess it, until at last it could no longer be hid, and one tried to express it thus: ‘I perceive some fragrance of wondrous odour, as of that of all flowers collected into one; also some burning as of fire, not penal but somehow very sweet; moreover, also a certain unaccustomed and incomparable gladness diffused in my heart, which suddenly consoles me in a wonderful manner, and gladdens me to such a degree that I can remember no more the sadness, nor any labour. Yea, even the load, although a heavy one, which I am carrying on my back from this place to the monastery, is so lightened, I know not how, that I do not perceive I have a load at all.’