HISTORY and legend may dispute the claims of that heroic character, Joan of Arc, but literature, music, and art have found inspiration in her story. Led on by angelic summons and the visitation of a heavenly host, her courageous fidelity to her vision awakens thought to present hopeful endeavor. She lives for all time, regardless of controversy. In her hopes and aspirations, in her victory and her defeat, all may learn to listen and obey. The lonely shepherd girl, tending her flock, heard nature's voices all about her. She learned to listen. Communion with nature brought her close to nature's God, and when she prayed to God that France might be saved, she listened for His answer to her prayer. We are told that Joan's nature yearned ever toward the infinite; that no thought of self marred it, and so "the voices"—her own spiritual intuitions—prepared her to save her country from the hands of the oppressor. We are also told that the voices directed and protected her all through a campaign of miracles, and that only after she listened to the human voice of Charles VII, and allowed it to overrule her angelic guides, did her path lead into darkness and despair.
In this age we have been given another heroic character, one who like Joan heard the call because she was listening. God spoke to our Leader, and we know how she withdrew from the world to listen, that through her might be given a message of hope and victory. Today unnumbered thousands who have been freed from sickness and sin breathe a prayer of gratitude and love for the gentle woman who proved herself heroic in faithfulness to her vision. The biography of every great man and woman reveals a period, at some time in their earthly career, when there came a need to listen. To the spectator such a time seemed fallow and of great loneliness of soul. History proved, however, that this period of seeming unfruitfulness was the preparation for the mental activity and productiveness which followed it. The loneliness of spirit seemed a necessary part of the sore travail attending the new birth, and when the biographer played upon it for literary purposes it served to heighten the hush of mystery and the wonder of miracle in such a life.
In the old thought we believed suffering to be a necessary part of the birth and growth of a new ideal, but Christian Science teaches us that progress is painless, and that it would be discerned as such were it not for the struggle to subdue and have dominion over a false sense of self. Is it not a logical deduction, then, that the intensity of the struggle indicates the greatness of the idea and the opposition of material sense to its manifestation? The second birth comes only after one has experienced the futility of all that the self undertakes and is disappointed in. It comes only when one is willing to listen to the divine Mind and to let Love plan and execute the divine plan through us. "Having something to meet" is not always an unqualified indication of our industry in mental labors, and did we regard it less a virtue, realizing that the warfare ceases when all error in our own consciousness is overcome, we would be less prone to converse about the things we have to meet.
