He will fear God in thunder and worship His loveliness in flowers.
And parables shall charm his heart, while doctrines seem dead mystery."
Illustration is something laid alongside of—parallel—for comparison, and should be short, obvious, and appropriate. There must always be something to illustrate.
For instance: If we were teaching, "Take us the foxes, the little foxes," etc., we could illustrate the danger and influence of little evils or sins by saying: Chemists tell us that a single grain of iodine will color 7000 times its weight in water; so a little sin may discolor and destroy a good character. A ruined man once said: "It was that ten minutes on the street-corner, reading a bad book, that destroyed my whole life." "It was that penny I stole when a very young boy," said an old man, "that sent me four times to prison, and confined me twenty-eight years out of sixty of my life, and all for stealing less than thirty-eight dollars."
Or if the lesson was, "No man can serve two masters," etc., let the teacher say: "The other day I saw two men together walking down the avenue, and a little dog was running behind them; so they went on for a while, and I wondered to which of them the dog belonged. When they came to the corner of a certain street they shook hands and went opposite ways. Then I saw at once to which of them the little dog belonged. He could not follow both; so he trotted after his master. So, dear children, it is with you; you may try to be Christ's servants and the servants of Satan at the same time, but it will be in vain; 'You cannot serve God and mammon.'"
If on the subject of falsehood, we would impress our pupils with the fact that the degree does not affect criminality. An apt illustration will be found in "Eve and the forbidden fruit."
The Bible is full of perfect examples, if rightly selected. "Old Humphrey," the English writer for children, abounded in pertinent illustrations. I copy one: "Think not that because you look like other teachers or scholars, and undertake the same duties, that no difference is seen by those around you. You may look alike and be altogether different."
Illustration 1. "I came to two frozen ponds, so much alike in size and form that at the first view one might have been regarded as the counterpart of the other. This was, however, very far from being the case; for, after making a hole in the ice, I found one to be only a few inches deep, while with my stick I could not reach the bottom of the other."
2. "I picked up two walnuts as they lay among the dry leaves, under the tree on which they had grown; both were large, and I thought that each would be good; but, no! one was altogether hollow, while the other contained a capital kernel."
3. "I bought two apples at a fruit-stand—ruddy and ripe; I do not believe the man who sold them to me could have pointed out any difference between them; and yet, for all this, when I came to turn them around and examine them, I found one of them to be firm and sound, and the other rotten to the very core."