307. All useful functions, which are the goals of creation, are in forms, and they get these forms from the material substances characteristic of earth. All the things I have been talking about so far--the sun, the atmospheres, and the earth--are simply means toward goals, and the goals of creation are what are brought forth from earth by the Lord as the sun, through the atmospheres. These goals are called useful functions, and they include everything involved in the plant kingdom, everything involved in the animal kingdom, and ultimately the human race and the angelic heaven that comes from it.
These are called useful functions because they are receptive of divine love and wisdom and because they focus on God the Creator as their source and thereby unite him with his master work in such a way that they continue to exist through him in the same way they arose. I say "they focus on God the Creator as their source and unite him with his master work," but this is talking in terms of the way things seem. It actually means that God the Creator works it out so that these useful functions seem to focus on and unite themselves to him on their own initiative. I will describe later [310-317] how they focus on and thereby unite themselves to him.
I have already dealt with these subjects to some extent in appropriate places; in 47-51, for example, divine love and wisdom cannot fail to be and to be manifested in others that it has created; in 54-60 [55-60], everything in the created universe is a vessel of divine love and wisdom; and in 65-68, the useful functions of every created thing tend upward to us step by step, and through us to God the creator, their source.
