[Illustrate this with a big bunch of keys, of many sizes and shapes.]
All our lives, children, we are like a man walking through a vast house, with many long passages from which open many doors. Every day has a door, and so has every duty and every sorrow and every joy, every trial and every obstacle and every success.
And all of these doors are locked tight. We may batter down the doors as some people do, but how much better it is quietly to open them with the proper keys! Now those keys are Bible verses.
Do you know that there is a Bible verse for the especial trials and tasks and joys of every day, if you only know where to find it? Somewhere in the Bible is a little golden key that will fit into just the keyhole that is before you at this moment, I care not what it is. You may have a hard lesson to get; the Bible has a key to it. You may be grieving over a great trouble; the Bible has a key that will open the door and let you out into a happier room. Whatever may be your difficulty, you can find a key for it somewhere in this wonderful book.
And now,—did you ever think of it?—the Sunday school is a key school. Some people read their Bibles all their lives, and yet do not learn where to find the keys of which I have been speaking. When they are in difficulty, they turn to the Bible and read verses haphazard; and the key they find is very often the wrong one and does not fit the door at all, no matter how much they turn it and twist it.
What you are doing in the key school is to grow so familiar with the whole Bible that you can at once turn to any part of it that will help you in the way you need help at the time, so that in your times of prosperity you will not get the sorrow key, and in your times of sorrow you will not get the bad-temper key, or make any such silly mistake.
Now, do you not think the key school one well worth attending and helping on in every way you can?