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 himself in a
position in which, at any moment, he can obtain the history, from
childhood, of every living soul in his diocese, and of its present
state. Down in that back street, Bill and Nancy, knocking each other's
teeth out!--Does the bishop know all about it? Has he his eye upon
them? Has he _had_ his eye upon them? Can he circumstantially explain
to us how Bill got into the habit of beating Nancy about the head? If
he cannot, he is no bishop, though he had a mitre as high as Salisbury
steeple; he is no bishop,--he has sought to be at the helm instead of
the masthead; he has no sight of things. "Nay," you say, "it is not
his duty to look after Bill in the back street." What! the fat sheep
that have full fleeces--you think it is only those he should look
after, while (go back to your Milton) "the hungry sheep look up, and
are not fed, besides what the grim wolf with privy paw" (bishops
knowing nothing about it) "daily devours apace, and nothing said"?
"But that's not our idea of a bishop." [4] Perhaps not; but it was St.
Paul's; and it was Milton's. They may be right, or we may be; but we
must not think we are reading either one or the other by putting our
meaning into their words.