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.

214. Affection, thought and action also exist in a succession of like degrees, because every affection has some relation to love, every thought some relation to wisdom, and every action some relation to useful endeavor.

Charity, faith and good work exist in a succession of like degrees; for charity is a matter of affection, faith a matter of thought, and good work a matter of action.

Will, understanding and practice similarly exist in a succession of like degrees; for will is a matter of love and so of affection, understanding a matter of wisdom and so of faith, and practice a matter of useful endeavor and so of work.

As all the qualities of wisdom and love are present in useful endeavor, therefore, so all the qualities of thought and affection are present in action, all the qualities of faith and charity in good work, and so on. But all of these must be homogeneous, that is to say, accordant.