30. It is because the very essence of the Divine is love and wisdom that we have two abilities of life. From the one we get our discernment, and from the other volition. Our discernment is supplied entirely by an inflow of wisdom from God, while our volition is supplied entirely by an inflow of love from God. Our failures to be appropriately wise and appropriately loving do not take these abilities away from us. They only close them off; and as long as they do, while we may call our discernment "discernment" and our volition "volition," essentially they are not. So if these abilities really were taken away from us, everything human about us would be destroyed--our thinking and the speech that results from thought, and our purposing and the actions that result from purpose.

We can see from this that the divine nature within us dwells in these two abilities, in our ability to be wise and our ability to love. That is, it dwells in the fact that we are capable of being wise and loving. I have discovered from an abundance of experience that we have the ability to love even though we are not wise and do not love as we could. You will find this experience described in abundance elsewhere.

4191. 'And Jacob said to his brothers' means people who perform works that are inherently good. This is clear from the representation of 'Jacob' as the Lord's Divine Natural, dealt with already, and from the meaning of 'brothers' as goods, dealt with in 3815, 4121, in this case people performing works that are inherently good, who, as shown above in 4189, are the gentiles. For all who are governed by good are joined to the Lord's Divine, and because they are joined to Him they are called 'brothers' by the Lord, as in Mark,

Jesus looking around on those who were sitting around Him said, Behold My mother and My brothers! For whoever does the will of God is My brother, and My sister, and My mother. Mark 3:31, 34-35.

Every joining together is effected through love and charity, as anyone may recognize, for a joining together spiritually is nothing other than love and charity. Love to the Lord, it is evident, causes one to be joined to Him; and so does charity towards the neighbour, as is clear from the Lord's words in Matthew,

Insofar as you did it to one of the least of these My brothers you did it to Me. Matthew 25:40.

This refers to charitable works.