Article May 31, 1958 Issue

"BE FRUITFUL, AND MULTIPLY"

EUGENIE VON STIEDA

According to Christian Science, the Bible has to be taken spiritually as well as literally. To show that we understand God's precepts, we have to apply our understanding of them. In Genesis (1:27, 28) we read: "God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, replenish the earth."

Here someone may ask, "Why need we be fruitful and multiply if God's creation is finished and complete?" Mary Baker Eddy says in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (p. 517), "Divine Love blesses its own ideas, and causes them to multiply,—to manifest His power."

For a long time the writer read the command, "Be fruitful, and multiply," without specially pondering it. After many years it came to her one day as a revelation that this passage too had to be understood spiritually. She saw clearly that man cannot add something to God's creation, which is finished and complete, but that man multiplies, that is, unfolds divine qualities, in their infinity, which are his by reflection and are ever present.

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