edge of faith as mere memory-knowledges, and act in this manner.
43. Verse 22. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and the fowl shall be multiplied in the earth. Everything that has in itself life from the Lord fructifies and multiplies itself immensely; not so much while the man lives in the body, but to an amazing degree in the other life. To "be fruitful," in the Word, is predicated of the things that are of love, and to "multiply," of the things that are of faith; the "fruit" which is of love contains "seed," by which it so greatly multiplies itself. The Lord's "blessing" also in the Word signifies fructification and multiplication, because they proceed from it. Verse 23. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.
44. Verses 24, 25. And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living soul after its kind, the beast, and the moving thing, and the wild animal of the earth after its kind; and it was so. And God made the wild animal of the earth after its kind, and the beast after its kind, and everything that creepeth on the ground after its kind; and God saw that it was good. Man, like the earth, can produce nothing of good unless the knowledges of faith are first sown in him, whereby he may know what is to be believed and done. It is the office of the understanding to hear the Word, and of the will to do it. To hear the Word and not to do it, is like saying that we believe when we do not live according to our belief; in which case we separate hearing and doing, and thus have a divided mind, and become of those whom the Lord calls "foolish" in the following passage:—
Whosoever heareth My words, and doeth them, I will liken unto a wise man who built his house upon a rock: but every one that heareth My words, and doeth them not, I liken to a foolish man, who built his house upon the sand (Matt. vii. 24, 26).
The things that belong to the understanding are signified—as before shown—by the "creeping things which the waters bring forth," and also by the "fowl upon the earth," and "upon the faces of the expanse;" but those which are of the will are signified here by the "living soul which the earth produces," and by the "beast" and "creeping thing," and also by the "wild animal of that earth."
