for enterprise and energy. The men of greatest learning and of greatest talent alike looked to her to provide scope for the employment of their abilities. All this was changed by the issue of the Easter controversies. The Saxons in a body went over to the Roman party, and those who refused to conform had to leave the country. The Irish missionaries were therefore compelled to retire from the field, and find for themselves other habitations. Thus Colman, as we have seen, led his small body of followers first to Iona, and then to the west coast of Ireland. There could scarcely have been a greater change, and we find it hard to understand how men who had been accustomed to the one life could ever have been able to endure the other. At Lindisfarne they directed a great spiritual enterprise. They were the religious leaders and teachers of the people. The work of education, of evangelization, and of the Christian ministry occupied their time; and they had besides the excitement of controversy, which though no doubt in many ways an evil, yet produces a certain amount of enthusiasm, and stimulates mental and spiritual activity in no inconsiderable degree. At Innisboffin all was changed. The missionaries were forced to become hermits. Every condition of existence was reversed. We are not surprised that some of them found the new régime unendurable, and that those who could work together with loyalty and good-will could not live together in comparative idleness, but had to separate into two distinct communities.
In Iona itself the change must have been very great. From the time of its foundation the very reason of its existence was its missionary work, and when suddenly its whole mission field was closed against it, the inmates must have felt that nothing
