I pause again, for this is a strange expression; a broken metaphor,
one might think, careless and unscholarly.

Not so: its very audacity and pithiness are intended to make us
look close at the phrase and remember it. Those two monosyllables
express the precisely accurate contraries of right character, in the
two great offices of the Church--those of bishop and pastor.

A "Bishop" means "a person who sees."

A "Pastor" means "a person who feeds."

The most unbishoply character a man can have is therefore to be
Blind.

The most unpastoral is, instead of feeding, to want to be fed,--to
be a Mouth.

Take the two reverses together, and you have "blind mouths." We may
advisably follow out this idea a little. Nearly all the evils in
the Church have arisen from bishops desiring POWER more than LIGHT.
They want authority, not outlook. Whereas their real office is not
to rule; though it may be vigorously to exhort and rebuke: it is
the king's office to rule; the bishop's office is to OVERSEE the
flock; to number it, sheep by sheep; to be ready always to give full
account of it. Now it is clear he cannot give account of the souls,
if he has not so much as numbered the bodies, of his flock. The
first thing, therefore, that a bishop has to do is at least to put