# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_M rz 1862_S92
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

92    Literary Notices.

— often copied from older paintings — miniature pictures, to render in watercolor and gather into an album. The service that music renders us in songs through the melody, the art of painting performs for us in the present work. Thus, for example, the little hymn "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming" can, through hearing the composition by M. Praetorius, just as through the sight of the present art-leaf, become for us something quite new. We behold the cross; in the four corners that its arms form are written the four verses of the hymn; the tips of the four arms are adorned with miniatures: on the left, "Marie the pure maiden" with the Christ-child; above, the Annunciation; on the right, the adoration of the kings; and finally, below, a crucifixus; but out of the wood of the cross there springs a rose, which winds about the whole trunk and completes itself at its center into a splendid flower. — The pleasant English custom of laying the table of the great family room with all manner of books and engravings seems to be spreading among us as well. Alongside a splendid Bible, this work would deserve one of the first places in such a collection. It might also make a lovely gift for a bride-to-be.

Published by F. Schöningh in Paderborn last year: The Most Blessed Virgin Mary. New Studies on Christianity, by August Nicolas. Translated from the French by Sylvester Hester. Volume 1. 2nd edition.

That the author, the French lawyer August Nicolas, is a man held in high regard in the Roman Church already appears from the fact that the Holy Father honored him with the Order of Pius for his "philosophical studies on Christianity," as well as from the fact that his writings have gone through numerous editions and have even been translated into many foreign languages. He treats chiefly the relation of Mary to God the Father, to Jesus Christ, and to mankind. He writes: "He (God) could even have kept the execution of the mystery entirely hidden from her, so that she would have been merely a passive instrument; He could have formed the second Adam out of the woman just as He had formed the woman out of the first Adam. But no! with Mary, God chooses to subordinate His own supreme authority; He makes His proposal to her, submits Himself to whatever difficulties His creature might have raised for Him, and awaits her assent. One may even observe that in this mysterious council, to which Mary was admitted along with the three divine Persons, these have, so to speak, only a single will, only a single voice, because over against Mary they constitute but a single God — so that the will, the voice of Mary alone, already outweighs the counsel of God and holds heaven and earth in suspense" (p. 203). "The greatness which the Father gave her (Mary) when He chose her as His bride and associated her with His begetting, she gratefully returned by cooperating in the subordination of the Son, and thus