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).
From this question, which the Lord asked Job, we know that at the world's birthday, when its foundations were laid, angels were there, rejoicing in God's works, though we do not know when these "sons of God" were created.