illustrates by a proverb that would not otherwise have reached us; “that saying,” he says, “appears true to me: _A rich man is either himself an unjust one, or the heir of one_.”[205] Again, the Lord has said: “Many be called, but few chosen;” (Matt. xx. 16;) many have the outward marks of a Christian profession, few the inner substance. Some early Christian Fathers loved much to bring into comparison with this a Greek proverb, spoken indeed quite independently of it, and long previously; and the parallel certainly is a singularly happy one: _The thyrsus-bearers are many, but the bacchants few_;[206] many assume the signs and outward tokens of inspiration, whirling the thyrsus aloft; but those whom the god indeed fills with his spirit are few all the while.[207] With our Lord’s words concerning the mote and the beam (Matt. vii. 3, 5) compare this Chinese proverb: _Sweep away the snow from thine own door, and heed not the frost upon thy neighbour’s tiles_. [Sidenote: Proverbs in sermons.] It has been sometimes a matter of consideration to me whether we of the clergy might not make larger use, though of course it would be only occasional, of proverbs in our public teaching than we do. Great popular preachers of time past, or, seeing that this phrase has now so questionable a sound, great preachers for the people, such as have found their way to the universal heart of their fellows, addressing themselves not to that which some men had different from others, but to that rather which each had in common with all, have been ever great employers of proverbs. Thus he who would know the riches of those in the German tongue, with the vigorous manifold employment of which they are capable, will find no richer mine to dig in than the works of Luther. And such employment of them would, I believe, with our country congregations, be especially valuable. Any one, who by after investigation has sought to discover how much our rustic hearers carry away, even from the sermons to which they have attentively listened, will find that it is hardly ever the course and tenor of the argument, supposing the discourse to have contained such; but if anything was uttered, as it used so often to be by the best puritan preachers, tersely, pointedly, epigrammatically, this will have stayed by them, while all beside has passed away. Now, the merits of terseness and point, which have caused other words to be remembered, are exactly those which signalize the proverb, and generally in a yet higher degree.