If it were not for a few illuminating anecdotes, and the thrice blessed custom of letter writing, we should never know what manner of thing human goodness, exalted human goodness, is; and so acquiesce ignorantly in Sir Leslie Stephen’s judgment.  The sinners of the world stand out clear and distinct, full of vitality, and of an engaging candour.  The saints of Heaven shine dimly through a nebulous haze of hagiology.  They are embodiments of inaccessible virtues, as remote from us and from our neighbours as if they had lived on another planet.  There is no more use in asking us to imitate these incomprehensible creatures than there would be in asking us to climb by easy stages to the moon.  Without some common denominator, sinner and saint are as aloof from each other as sinner and archangel.  Without some clue to the saint’s spiritual identity, the record of his labours and hardships, fasts, visions, and miracles, offers nothing more helpful than bewilderment.  We may be edified or we may be sceptical, according to our temperament and training; but a profound unconcern devitalizes both scepticism and edification.  What have we mortals in common with these perfected prodigies of grace?

It was Cardinal Newman who first entered a protest against “minced” saints, against the pious and popular custom of chopping up human records into lessons for the devout.  He took exception to the hagiological licence which assigns lofty motives to trivial actions.  “The saint from humility made no reply.”  “The saint was silent out of compassion for the ignorance of the speaker.”  He invited us to approach the Fathers of the Church in their unguarded moments, in their ordinary avocations, in their moods of gayety and depression; and, when we accepted the invitation, these figures, lofty and remote, became imbued with life.  It is one thing to know that Saint Chrysostom retired at twenty-three to a monastery near Antioch, and there spent six years in seclusion and study.  It is another and more enlightening thing to be made aware, through the medium of his own letters, that he took this step with reasonable doubts and misgivings,—­doubts which extended to the freshness of the monastery bread, misgivings which concerned themselves with the sweetness of the monastery oil.  And when we read these candid expressions of anxiety, Saint Chrysostom, by virtue of his healthy young appetite, and his distaste (which any poor sinner can share) for rancid oil, becomes a man and a brother.  It is yet more consoling to know that when well advanced in sainthood, when old, austere, exiled, and suffering many privations for conscience’ sake, Chrysostom was still disposed to be a trifle fastidious about his bread.  He writes from Caesarea to Theodora that he has at last found clean water to drink, and bread which can be chewed.  “Moreover, I no longer wash myself in broken crockery, but have contrived some sort of bath; also I have a bed to which I can confine myself.”