364. (i) The Lord flows into every human being with all His Divine love, all His Divine wisdom, and so with all His Divine life.

We read in the Book of Creation that man was created an image of God, and God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life (Genesis 1:27; 2:7). This description means that he is an organ of life, not life itself. For God could not have created another like Himself; if He could have done so, there would be as many gods as there are people. Nor could He create life, just as neither can light be created. But He could create man to be a form for life to act on, just as He created the eye to be a form for light to act on. Nor could God, nor can He, divide His essence, since it is one and indivisible. So since God alone is life, it follows indubitably that God uses His own life to give life to every human being. Without that quickening man would be as regards flesh nothing but a sponge, and as regards bones nothing but a skeleton, no more alive than a clock, which is kept running by a pendulum together with a weight or a spring. Since this is so, it also follows that God flows in with every person with all His Divine life, that is, with all His Divine love and Divine wisdom. These two make up His Divine life (39-40 above); for the Divine cannot be divided.

[2] However, the manner in which God flows in with all His Divine life can be grasped as somewhat resembling the way the sun of the world flows in with all its essence, which is heat and light, into every tree, into every shrub and flower, into every stone, ordinary as well as precious, so that each single object draws its ration from this common inflow; but the sun does not split up its light and heat, giving part to this object and part to that. It is much the same with the sun of heaven, which radiates Divine love as heat and Divine wisdom as light. These two flow into human minds, just as the heat and light of the sun of the world flow into human bodies, giving them life depending on the nature of their form; the form of each takes from the common inflow what it needs. The following saying of the Lord can be applied to this:

Your Father makes His sun rise upon the wicked and the good, and sends rain upon the righteous and the unrighteous, Matthew 5:45.

[3] Also, the Lord is omnipresent, and where He is present, there He is with His whole essence. It is impossible for Him to take anything away from that essence, so as to give a part to one and another part to another, but He gives it in its entirety, enabling a person to take a little or much. He says too that He has His dwelling with those who keep His commandments, and that the faithful are in Him and He is in them. In short, everything is full of God, and from that fulness each takes his own share. Everything held in common is like this, for instance, the atmospheres or the oceans. The atmosphere is the same on the smallest as it is on the largest scale. It does not assign a part of itself to a person's breathing, to a bird's flying, or to the sails of a ship, or the sails of a wind-mill; but each takes from it its own portion and uses for itself as much as is enough. It is also similar with a granary full of wheat; the owner each day takes from it his own rations, and it is not the granary that distributes them.

4683. 'And he told it to his brothers' means to the adherents to faith separated from charity. This is clear from the representation of 'Joseph's brothers' as the Church which turns aside from charity to faith, and in the abstract sense as things that are matters of faith, dealt with above in 4665, 4671, 4679. In this case the adherents to faith separated from charity are meant because the statement that follows about them hating him all the more means still greater contempt and aversion. The position with that Church is that when it first comes into being its members proclaim charity. But they are led to do so solely on the basis of doctrine and thus of factual knowledge, not of actual charity nor thus of affection or what is in their hearts. In course of time, as charity and affection are blotted out in their hearts they proclaim faith, and at length when no charity exists any longer they proclaim faith alone, saying that this faith without works enables one to be saved. At this point also they no longer call works the works of charity but those of faith, naming them the fruits of faith.

[2] Members of that Church do, it is true, link faith and works together in this way, but doctrine, not life, is the basis on which they do so. And because they do not make salvation depend in any way at all on the life of faith, which is good, only on faith - even though they know plainly from the Word, and their own understanding also tells them, that doctrine is nothing without life, or that faith is nothing without its fruits - they make the saving power of faith depend on confidence. As a result of this they also forsake the fruits of faith, unaware that all confidence owes its existence to the end in view which is life, or that true confidence cannot possibly exist except in good, and that spurious and also false confidence rest in evil. And to set faith and charity even further apart they also declare persuasively that the confidence of only a moment's duration, engendered even in the final moment of life, can save a person, no matter what his life had been prior to that. Yet for all this they know that the life which is his own awaits everyone after death and that each will be judged according to the works he has done in life. These few remarks make clear the nature of faith separated from charity, and therefore the nature of the Church which makes faith essential and not the life of faith. The falsities which flow from this as their fountainhead will in the Lord's Divine mercy be mentioned further on.