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.