There is one further subject for painting in connection with Mary the mother of Jesus, and that is her death and assumption. Schoreel has with exceptional beauty depicted a death of Mary in which we find the charm of her youth once more restored[264]. This master has united in his picture the expression of somnambulism, presence of death, rigidity, and blindness towards the exterior world with one which seems to suggest that the spirit, which seems somehow to penetrate through their general aspect, has found a home elsewhere and is blessed therein. (_γγ_)_Thirdly_, we must include within the sphere of the actual presence of God in the life, sufferings, and glorification of Himself, _mankind at large_[265], that is to say the consciousness of _individual human life_, which God, or more accurately the events of His history, constitutes as itself an object of His love, communicating to it a content which is not merely finite but absolute in its significance. Here, too, we may emphasize the three aspects of tranquil _devotion_, _repentance_, and _conversion_, which both from the point of view of the soul and that of external condition the history of the Divine Passion repeats to mankind, no less than the ideal _consummation_ in glory and the blessedness of pure attainment. In respect to the _first_ of these, namely, devotion, we have here what is primarily the content of _prayer._ This relation is in one aspect of it a humbling, surrender of the self, the seeking of peace in another; from another point of view it is not a _petition_ but rather a _prayer_[266]. Petition and prayer are no doubt closely connected in so far, that is, as a prayer can be a petition. And yet the genuine petition seeks after something _for itself._ It importunes the man who possesses something of importance to myself, that he may feel inclined to do me a favour in virtue of the request, that his heart may yield, or his love may be roused toward me, in one word that his feeling of identity with myself may be awakened. What I, however, feel in making a petition is the desire for something, which the other person must lose if I am to secure it. The other person is to love me in order that my self-love may be satisfied, and my weal and necessity be promoted. I on the contrary give nothing further in the transaction unless it be contained in an admission that the person thus opportuned may ask for similar favours from myself. Prayer is not a petition of this type. It is an exaltation of the heart to the Absolute, which is assumed to be essentially Love, and as such possesses nothing independently[267]. The devotion itself is the gift, the petition itself is the blessedness. For although prayer may contain a petition for some particular thing, yet it is not this particular thing which is the true purport of the prayer; rather the essential truth of it is the conviction that the petition will be heard, and not heard in its