If Saint Chrysostom possessed, according to Newman, a cheerful temper, and “a sunniness of mind all his own,” Saint Gregory of Nazianzus was a fair humourist, and Saint Basil was a wit.  “Pensive playfulness” is Newman’s phrase for Basil, but there was a speed about his retorts which did not always savour of pensiveness.  When the furious governor of Pontus threatened to tear out his liver, Basil, a confirmed invalid, replied suavely, “It is a kind intention.  My liver, as at present located, has given me nothing but uneasiness.”

To Gregory, Basil was not only guide, philosopher, and friend; but also a cherished target for his jests.  It has been wisely said that we cannot really love anybody at whom we never laugh.  Gregory loved Basil, revered him, and laughed at him.  Does Basil complain, not unnaturally, that Tiberina is cold, damp, and muddy, Gregory writes to him unsympathetically that he is a “clean-footed, tip-toeing, capering man.”  Does Basil promise a visit, Gregory sends word to Amphilochus that he must have some fine pot-herbs, “lest Basil should be hungry and cross.”  Does Gregory visit Basil in his solitude at Pontus, he expresses in no measured terms his sense of the discomfort he endures.  It would be hard to find, in all the annals of correspondence, a letter written with a more laudable and well-defined intention of teasing its recipient, than the one dispatched to Basil by Gregory after he has made good his escape from the austerities of his friend’s housekeeping.

“I have remembrance of the bread and of the broth,—­so they were named,—­and shall remember them; how my teeth stuck in your hunches, and lifted and heaved themselves as out of paste.  You, indeed, will set it out in tragic style, taking a sublime tone from your own sufferings; but for me, unless that true Lady Bountiful, your mother, had rescued me quickly, showing herself in my need like a haven to the tempest-tossed, I had been dead long ago, getting myself little honour, though much pity, from Pontic hospitality.”

This is not precisely the tone in which the lives of the saints (of any saints of any creeds) are written.  Therefore is it better to read what the saints say for themselves than what has been said about them.  This is not precisely the point of view which is presented unctuously for our consideration, yet it makes all other points of view intelligible.  It is contrary to human nature to court privations.  We know that the saints did court them, and valued them as avenues to grace.  It is in accord with human nature to meet privations cheerfully, and with a whimsical sense of discomfiture.  When we hear the echo of a saint’s laughter ringing down the centuries, we have a clue to his identity; not to his whole and heroic self, but to that portion of him which we can best understand, and with which we claim some humble brotherhood.  We ourselves are not hunting assiduously for hardships; but which one of us has not summoned up courage enough to laugh in the face of disaster?