On the subject of preaching, Blessed Francis had very definite and weighty thoughts. He considered that it was not sufficient for a preacher to teach the ways of God to the unrighteous, and by converting the wicked, to build up by his words the walls of Jerusalem, that is, of holy Church, while making known to God's people the ways of divine providence. He wanted more than this, and said that every sermon ought to have some special plan, with always for its end the giving glory to God and the converting and instructing of those who were to hear it. Sometimes this would be the setting forth of a mystery, sometimes the clearing up of some point of faith, sometimes the denouncing of a particular vice, sometimes the endeavouring to plant some virtue in the hearts of the hearers. "No one," he said, "can sufficiently lay to heart the importance of having a definite aim in preaching; for want of it many carefully studied sermons are without fruit. Some preachers are content to explain their text with all the painstaking and mental effort that they can bring to bear upon the subject. Others give themselves up to elaborate and exhaustive research and excite the admiration of their hearers, either by their scientific reasonings, their eloquence, the studied grace of their gestures, or by their perfect diction. Others add to all this beautiful and useful teaching, but so that it only slips in here and there, as it were, by chance, and is not expressly dwelt upon. But when we have only one aim, and when all our reasonings and all our movements tend towards it and gather round it, as the radii of a circle round the unity of its centre, then the impression made is infinitely more powerful. Such speaking has the force of a mighty river which leaves its mark upon the hardest of the stones it flows over. "Drones visit every flower, yet gather no honey from any. The working bee does otherwise: it settles down upon each flower just as long as is necessary for it to suck in enough sweetness to make its one honeycomb. So those who follow my method will preach profitable sermons, and will deserve to be accounted faithful dispensers of the divine mysteries; prudent administrators of the word of life and of eternal life." When our Blessed Father heard a certain preacher praised up to the skies, he asked in what virtues he excelled; whether in humility, mortification, gentleness, courage, devotion or what? When told that he was said to preach very well, he replied: "That is speaking, not acting: the former is far easier than the latter. There are many who speak and yet act not, and who destroy by their bad example what they build up with their tongue. A man whose tongue is longer than his arm, is he not a monstrosity?"