Part 8

Perhaps it was a good thing that this boy should thus prove for himself that it is only God who can create anything; only God of whom it could be said, "He spake, and it was done."

I did not tell this little story to the children, but I said to Leslie, "You heard Ernest say just now that he was going to make a kennel for your stray doggie; do you think he could make one?" Leslie thought perhaps he might if he worked very hard; and then I asked them all whether, if he worked very hard, day and night, for a long, long time, Ernest could create a kennel?

"No, indeed he could not. He never could, no matter how hard he worked." Everybody was sure of this; for even little Dick quite understood that if the cleverest and handiest boy in the world were told that he must make a box, he could not even begin to make the commonest box unless he had something given him to make it out of, and something too to make it with. "He would need wood," they said, "and nails, and a hammer and saw; and if it were to be a nice box, to last long, he would want paint, and a lock and key, and hinges; and if he wished everyone to know that it was his own box, he must mark it with his name when it was finished."

Now I am sure you quite understand that this word "created," which you find in the very first verse of your Bible, is a word which you must not forget to notice whenever it is used, because it is a wonderful word, which can be used only in speaking of God, the Creator, and of the Son of God, by whom and for whom all the things that we can see, and all that we cannot see, were created; and in whose power they stand together.

Now I want you to read again very carefully the verses which we have read, and to notice that we have only one verse to tell us what God did at the beginning; this one verse explains that it was then that He created the heaven and the earth. This is all that God has told us, and it is just what we need to know; for how could we ever have found out by what means this earth of ours came into being, at the very first, if God had not been pleased to tell us that He created it?

But what a happy thing it is just to listen to the account which God Himself gives us, telling how the heaven and the earth came into being!

One who simply receives God's word into his heart will understand more than the cleverest man who ever lived, who tries by his own mind to search into the beginning of things, and to account for all that we now see around us by any other way. We read, "By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God." Faith does not wait till it sees, but believes what God says, because He says it. We may say that we cannot understand what creation is, but we can find rest for our restless thoughts by saying "Yes" to all that God has told us--and the very first line of His Book explains all that we need to know about, how the heaven and the earth came into being, when it tells us that God created them in the beginning.

We read next, "And the earth was without form and void." We are not told in the verse which follows anything more about the "heaven"; that means the vast universe of which our earth is but a tiny part; but of the earth we read two things which are very surprising, when we think of what it is like now:

"Without form and void"--what does that mean?

After I had explained to the elder children that these words, which are used to describe the earth, mean that it was waste and desolate and without order, we looked for a verse in the New Testament which tells us that "God is not the author of confusion" (1 Cor. xiv. 33); and then we spoke about how we can be quite sure that the earth, which is part of God's creation, was not in disorder, not a waste and desolate place in the beginning; and we found in the Old Testament this other verse:

"For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God Himself that formed the earth and made it; He hath established it, He created it not in vain, He formed it to be inhabited; I am the Lord; and there is none else" (Isaiah xlv. 18).

The reason why we found this verse was because I wanted to show Sharley and Chris and Ernest that there the same word is used about the earth as in the verse in Genesis of which we had just been speaking. The words "in vain" are the same which were there translated "without form" by the people who turned the Hebrew, in which most of the Old Testament was first written, into English, that we might be able to read it. So you see how very important words are, and learn that when God tells us in one part of His Book that He created the earth not "without form," and in another part that it was (or became) "without form," the state of the earth as it is described in the second verse of the first chapter of Genesis was different from its condition when God created it in the beginning. Between these two verses, so close together in your Bible, ages upon ages may have run their course; a distance of time may have passed so great that we cannot measure it by any thoughts of ours.

What happened between the time, which God calls "the beginning," the time of the earth's creation, and that time when what He created had become "waste and desolate," we do not know. What this earth was like, when God first created it, we do not know. How the plants and animals, which now lie buried deep beneath the ground upon which we tread, and shut up within the rocks, lived and died, we do not know. How confusion and desolation came, we do not know. And why do we not know?

Because God has not told us. People have thought a great deal about it, and they say that upon the earth itself may be read, as in a book, marks of the many changes which it went through during that far, far away time; but what we have to remember is that God does not tell us anything about it in His Book; it is with the days and weeks and years of Time and the "from everlasting to everlasting" of His great Eternity, about which He does speak to us, that we have to do.

God speaks to us, the inhabitants of the earth, of what it concerns us to know--and the first thing we learn about this earth upon which we live is that it was created by Him.

The next thing that we learn is that the earth which He had "formed to be inhabited" was "without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep." This was the state of the earth which God had created, when He began the work of His wonderful "Days," and brought what had become a scene of desolation into order and beauty, a place prepared for men to dwell in.

And now there is one more verse to find, because it speaks about those SIX DAYS in which God "made" (not "created") the heaven and the earth. "In six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is." (Exodus xx. 11.)

How wonderful it is, is it not? that God should tell us so much about His work! He might have made everything in a moment, by one word, but He was pleased to take all these "Days," and to tell us about the wonderful things which he made upon each of them, and at the end of them all we read--

"And God saw everything that He had made, and, behold it was [not waste and desolate any more, but] very good."

I wish that I could look over your shoulder as you are reading, and ask you whether there is anything you want to have explained. Ah, well! I cannot, and, perhaps, if I could I should not explain to you nearly so well as father or mother would. Only be sure you ask questions, if there is anything you do not understand, that you may have it made plain to you.

I once told my children about a little girl I knew, who very much wanted to know things, but sometimes she went on ever so long without knowing, just because she was too proud to ask; she could not bear for people to find out that she did not know all that she thought a child of her age ought to know. But children of any age cannot know things without being taught, and so it came to pass that this child grew to be quite a big girl without knowing how to tell the time. Once, when her mother said, "Run and tell me what o'clock it is," Lucy ran off as quickly as if she knew all about it, and then she stood at the foot of the stairs and looked at the clock, and wondered why one hand was still and the other moved, and how grown-up people knew what time it was by just looking at their watches for half a minute. Before she had found out any of these puzzling things, all at once Lucy heard her mother's voice calling, "Lucy, Lucy," and she ran back to her in a great hurry.

When asked why she had been so long, this poor, proud child made some excuse. And then--I am ashamed to tell it, but it only shows what becomes of pretending to know, instead of asking to be taught--she told her mother what she guessed would be about the right time.

Her mother never thought she had been deceiving her; but Lucy went back to her play with a very heavy heart, and a miserable feeling of how naughty she had been, and how God knew all about it; and this was not the last time that the wish to be thought clever--so clever as not to need to be taught like other children, but to be able to find things out for herself--brought her into sad trouble.

After having heard the story of Lucy and the clock, my children knew how much I like them to ask questions, and were sure that I would answer them if I could; and so Sharley asked me about something which she could not understand.

"When God created the heaven and the earth, did He create the angels too?" she said. "Were there angels in the beginning?"

Now the first part of Sharley's question I could not answer. I could only say about it, "We do not know, because God has not told us."

Remember always, that when God does tell you a thing you must believe it, just because it is God who has said it; and it is only by believing what God tells you that you can understand it. But when you are quite sure that God has not told you about something which you would like to know, you must never try to guess at it, or make up something about it out of your own head. Our thoughts and fancies may seem very pretty, and please us very much; but we are quite sure to be wrong when we try to peep at what God has not shown us in the wonderful glass of His word.

But there is an answer to the last part of Sharley's question, and she found it in the Book of Job. When God was taking a great deal of pains to teach Job not to think himself wise or good--really not to think of himself at all--He asked him a great many questions which Job could not answer. This was one of the questions: "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.... When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?" (Job xxxviii. 4-7).