A little child once declared that she liked a certain sermon because there were so many "likes" in it. For the same reason, that same child would have liked Christ as a Sunday-school teacher. And we teachers will gain Christ's success in the same measure as we gain his power of putting the whole universe back of our thought.

For a thought comes forcibly from our minds in proportion as we see its relatedness. If we have put it into connection with a score of things, that score get behind it and push. An unrelated thought comes as tamely from the mind as a Jack from its box when the spring is broken. And so when a Sunday-school teacher would present a truth energetically, he must look all around the truth, crowd his mind with applications of the truth, fall in love with its beauty from many points of view; in brief, become thoroughly acquainted with the truth, and its enthusiastic friend.

How, now, shall we introduce the truth to the child? It is the manner of some to take the truth and the child, and bump heads together,—a process which very naturally develops a mutual shyness.

The true teacher, on the contrary, is a skilled master of ceremonies. From the crowd of likenesses, illustrations, and applications which have made him and the truth acquainted, he chooses one to go with it and act as mutual friend, to introduce the stranger thought to the child's mind, and put the two on easy terms together.

He does not make the common mistake of sending along the entire crowd, so that the introduced is lost in the throng of masters of ceremonies, so that the truth is confused, and acquaintanceship embarrassed by the parade of illustration. He knows that where one parable makes, two mar, and three ruin.

Nor will the shrewd teacher ever attempt introduction by something other than a mutual friend of both parties,—the truth and the child's mind. The myth of Alcestis may be connected with your own thought of the resurrection, but it is itself a stranger to the child's mind. The true mutual friend would be the metamorphosis of the butterfly.

Is that comparison stale? In seeking for fresh and brilliant illustrations, we are apt to forget that the longer the mutual friend has known both parties, the more apt will he be at furthering their acquaintance. The butterfly is truly to us a trite illustration of the resurrection, but not to the child.

Do not push forward the thought first, and after a ten minutes' awkward, floundering parley between it and the child's mind, proceed to introduce them by your illustration. After two people have talked together for ten minutes, they either need no introduction by that time, or have destroyed the possibility of acquaintanceship. Illustration first.

And after the introduction two mistakes may be made. The introducing illustration may keep on chattering, not allowing the truth and the mind of the child to say a word to each other. A master of ceremonies, who knows his business, knows when to draw quietly back, and leave the new acquaintanceship room to grow. The illustration is not the end, but the means.

The other mistake is in allowing the mutual friend to withdraw abruptly, before the two, the stranger thought and the child's mind, have broken the ice. Let him stay and put in a clever word now and then, until the acquaintanceship can stand by itself.

Nor is there any reason why, with every fresh truth, a fresh illustration should strut forward. Those social assemblies are best managed which are planned by one wise woman, and permeated throughout by her thoughtfulness, words of tact, and shrewd bits of engineering. One mistress to a party, as one cook to the broth. And so if you can find one illustration which is on good terms with all the truths in the lesson, and familiar also to the child's mind, by all means let that one illustration hold sway, as a genial host, throughout the entire half-hour, and associate the whole together.

But when the illustration ceases to illustrate, part with it, regretfully but promptly; as I, following my own advice, must here part with the illustration which has done duty hitherto.

In this whole matter, as in all others, only painstaking deserves or gains success. A genius for parable is rare. Gift here means the poet's power, his breadth of vision, his depth of sympathy, his tact and sense of fitness. But though it is a poet's gift, it need not be born in one. How may we gain skill in illustration?

In the first place, by gaining knowledge. How can we expect Jewish history to seem real, isolated, as it so often is, from all other history? We, too, have a Father Abraham. CÆsar crossed a river once, as, and yet not as, did Joshua. Compare Washington's farewell address with Samuel's. And, too, without science, such sciences as geology and astronomy, a Sunday-school teacher is but half armed. How wonderfully and inspiringly God's two books supplement each other, no one can guess who has not put the two together. In brief, for the theme is infinite, almost any fact, once learned, has constant surprises of usefulness, and in no ways more frequently than this of illustration.

In the next place, by gaining sympathy. No one can well use illustrations who is out of touch with his fellows. The best possible illumination of life questions is the story of the lives around you,—their trials and triumphs. Do you know a child who has done a heroic deed, though quietly, for the Master? Have you a friend who has conquered some sore temptation? Have you met a good man struggling against some inherited evil tendency? Have you knowledge of the disastrous results of some single life? Life comes closest to life, and experience furnishes the best similes.

And then we may study books, and learn how effective writers have used illustrations. A note-book collection of these will be helpful, even though the making of it is the end of it; for this study will help us toward the teacher's chief goal,—the power of putting things in the best way.

The newspapers should be one of the most fruitful fields for the gleaning of illustrations; and so they will be, when they learn to chronicle the good as thoroughly and brilliantly as they now chronicle the bad.

Of course,—though an "of course" seldom practically accepted,—a Bible character is the very best illustration of a Bible character, the Old Testament of the New, the last lesson of this, Moses of Paul, and Sinai of Hermon.

And of course, too,—though again a belied "of course,"—the less the illustration given by the teacher, and the more given by the scholar in answer to questions, the more vivid the impression. Too often we teachers smack our lips at the coming of the similes, and launch out into harangue.

Let us see in all this much more than a scheme of indirections. It is no easy task to find the best way into a child's mind, nor quite without pains and difficulty is the imitation of the Teacher who spoke many things in parables.