were given
her or not,--she yet might animate the courage of others, she might
stimulate them to heroic action, and revive their hopes; for if God was
with them, who could be against them? What she had to do was simply
this,--to persuade princes and nobles that the Lord would deliver the
nation. Let the conviction be planted in the minds of a religious people
that God is with them, and in some way will come to their aid if they
themselves will put forth their own energies, and they will be almost
sure to rally. And here was an inspired woman, as they supposed, ready
to lead them on to victory, not by her military skill, but by indicating
to them the way as an interpreter of the Divine will. This was not more
extraordinary than the repeated deliverances of the Hebrew nation under
religious leaders.

The signal deliverance of the French at that gloomy period from the
hands of the English, by Joan of Arc, was a religious movement. The Maid
is to be viewed as a religious phenomenon; she rested her whole power
and mission on the supposition that she was inspired to point out the
way of deliverance. She claimed nothing for herself, was utterly without
vanity, ambition, or pride, and had no worldly ends to gain. Her
character was without a flaw. She was as near perfection as any mortal
ever was: religious, fervent, unselfish, gentle, modest, chaste,
patriotic, bent on one thing only,--to be of service to her country,
without reward; and to be of service only by way of encouragement, and
pointing out what seemed to her to be the direction of God.

So Joan fearlessly stood before kings and nobles and generals, yet in
the modest gentleness of conscious virtue, to direct them what to do, as
a sort of messenger of Heaven. What was rank or learning to her? If she
was sent by a voice that spoke to her soul, and that voice was from God,
what was human greatness to her? It paled before the greatness which
commissioned her. In the discharge of her mission all men were alike in
her eyes; the distinctions of rank faded away in the mighty issues which
she wished to bring about, even the rescue of France from foreign
enemies, and which she fully believed she could effect with God's aid,
and in the way that He should indicate.

Whether the ruling powers fully believed in her or not, they at last
complied with her wishes and prayers, though not until she had been
subjected to many insults from learned priests and powerful nobles, whom
she