47. Divine love and wisdom cannot fail to be and to be manifested in others that it has created. The hallmark of love is not loving ourselves but loving others and being united to them through love. The hallmark of love is also being loved by others because this is how we are united. Truly, the essence of all love is to be found in union, in the life of love that we call joy, delight, pleasure, sweetness, blessedness, contentment, and happiness.

The essence of love is that what is ours should belong to someone else. Feeling the joy of someone else as joy within ourselves--that is loving. Feeling our joy in others, though, and not theirs in ourselves is not loving. That is loving ourselves, while the former is loving our neighbor. These two kinds of love are exact opposites. True, they both unite us; and it does not seem as though loving what belongs to us, or loving ourselves in the other, is divisive. Yet it is so divisive that to the extent that we love others in this way we later harbor hatred for them. Step by step our union with them dissolves, and the love becomes hatred of corresponding intensity.

327. All of the Lord's creations are useful functions; and they are useful functions in the sequence, on the level, and in the specific way that they relate to humanity and through humanity to the Lord, their source. I have already made the following points on this subject. Nothing can arise from God the Creator that is not useful (308). The useful functions of everything created tend upward, step by step, from the lowest to us, and through us to God the Creator, their source (65-68). The goal of creation--that everything should return to the Creator and that there should be a union--becomes manifest in outermost forms (167-172). They are useful to the extent that they focus on their Creator (307). Divinity cannot fail to exist in and be manifested in others that it has created (47-51). Everything in the universe is a vessel according to its usefulness, and this depends on its level (38 [58, 66]). Seen in terms of its functions, the universe is an image of God (39 [169, 298]). There are many other relevant statements as well. These witness to the truth that all the Lord's creations are useful functions, and that they are useful functions in the sequence, on the level, and in the specific way that they relate to humanity, and through humanity to the Lord, their source. It remains now to say something more detailed about useful functions.