Nine miles south of Staffa lies Iona, St. Columba’s blessed isle. “We were now,” wrote Dr. Johnson one hundred years ago, “treading that illustrious island which was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions, whence savage clans and roving barbarians derived the benefits of knowledge and the blessings of religion. To abstract the mind from all local emotion would be impossible if it were endeavored, and would be foolish if it were possible. Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses, whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. Far from me and from my friends be such frigid philosophy as may conduct us indifferent and unmoved over any ground which has been dignified by wisdom, bravery, or virtue. That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.”
It was in 563, more than thirteen hundred years ago, that Columkille, a voluntary exile from Erin,
which he loved with more than woman’s tenderness, landed upon this island. Twelve of his Irish monks had accompanied him, resolved to share his exile. Others soon followed, drawn by the fame of his sanctity, and in a little while Columkille and his apostles issued forth from Iona to carry the religion of Christ to the pagans who dwelt on the surrounding islands and on the mainland of Scotland; and from this little island the light of faith spread throughout the Caledonian regions. All the churches of Scotland looked to it as the source whence they had received God’s choicest gifts, and for two hundred years the abbots who succeeded St. Columba held spiritual dominion over the whole country. The Scottish kings chose Iona as their burial-place, in the hope of escaping the doom foretold in the prophecy:
“Seven years before that awful day
When time shall be no more,
A watery deluge will o’ersweep
Hibernia’s mossy shore;
The green-clad Isla, too, shall sink,
While with the great and good
Columba’s happy isle shall rear