it out of."

This seems quite plain, does it not? But do you know there was once a boy,
who did not believe that he could not create things until he had tried to
make something out of nothing, and found that only nothing came. He was
quite sure he could create anything if he only told it to come; so at last
his teacher said, "You had better try."

He was only a very little boy, so he thought he would try, and up he got
and stood as straight as he could on his chair, while he said with a loud
voice, "Fishes, be!"

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