With grave emphasis he pronounced his text: "What is the chief end of man?" and with fiery and eloquent eyes, in a strong, vibrating, and still musical voice, he commenced to deliver his soul-awakening message. The fire of his fervour kindled as he spoke of the purpose of human life; his broad-brim was dashed from his forehead on to one of the seats behind him. With the power of intense conviction his whole presence became an overwhelming persuasion, melting those who sat before him into tears and into one heart of wonder and humility under his high and simple words. The sermon itself has not come down to us. In his _Journal_,[39] Hicks has described the meeting as a "large and very favoured season." It seems to have been devoid of those painful incidents of opposition which saddened so many similar occasions during these last years of his ministry. The old man had been accused of Deism, as though he were a second Tom Paine and devotee of "Reason": in reality his message was somewhat conservative and essentially mystical. A hostile writer[40] asserts truly that the root of his heresy--if heresy we should call it--lay in his setting up of the Light Within as the primary rule of faith and practice. He always viewed the Bible writings as a secondary standard of truth or guide to action; as a book, though the best among books. And as a book, it was the "letter" only: the "spirit that giveth life" even to the letter, was in the hearts of men. In his attitude toward the idea of Christ, he distinguished, like many other mystics, between the figure of the historic Jesus of Nazareth and that indwelling Christ of universal mystical experience, wherewith according to his teaching, Jesus identified himself through the deepening of his human consciousness into that of Deity. In the mystical view, this God-consciousness is in some measure the common inheritance of all the saints, and underlies the everyday life of men. And to it, as a submerged but present element in the life of their hearers, Fox and the characteristic Quaker preachers have always directed their appeal, seeking to bring it up into consciousness. Once evoked and recognised, this divine element must direct and control all the faculties of the individual. It is the new humanity coming into the world.