Article January 28, 1933 Issue

Division and Multiplication

ETHEL PUTNAM

Those who do not comprehend the standpoint of Christian Science might wonder why the Directors of The Mother Church began in a period of financial depression to arrange for the building of the new Publishing House. Why should they call for contributions of money when most people were having less than their usual incomes? True, the undertaking would furnish work for many in Boston; but would that not be robbing one community to supply another? Should not anything we can spare be used in our various local communities? If our incomes have been diminished, and we are called upon to divide what we have, again and again, in unusual private and public charities, should we be asked to divide once more in order to provide funds for the new Publishing House?

If we work by the rule of division merely as a sharing of what we have, and fail to see the correlated rule of multiplication, we shall have fallen short of the good that is open to us through Christianly scientific understanding. Christian Scientists are asked to awake, for their own sakes and to help the world to the realization of true riches. When the Psalmist wrote, "No good thing will he [God] withhold from them that walk uprightly," he expressed with literary beauty a scientific truth.

If we consider the example of the Way-shower, we shall see what we should do. When the eager multitudes had followed him into the desert, he was moved by compassion to supply not only their spiritual, but also their human needs. There were at hand only five loaves and two small fishes, and there was no human method by which these could be divided to satisfy the hunger of "about five thousand men, beside women and children," but there was a spiritual law by which the true sense of supply could be multiplied to meet that special need. Jesus utilized this law of multiplication and not only fed the thousands, but had "twelve baskets full" left over. We may well take note that although our Master understood and demonstrated the infinity and instant availability of supply, he did not permit waste. He realized that there is a right use for all that God gives.

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