trainings are
letting loose subconscious allies behind the scenes, which in their way
work towards rearrangement; and the rearrangement towards which all
these deeper forces tend is pretty surely definite, and definitely
different from what he consciously conceives and determines. It may
consequently be actually interfered with (JAMMED, as it were, like the
lost word when we seek too energetically to recall it), by his
voluntary efforts slanting from the true direction.

[113] Starbuck, p. 64.

Starbuck seems to put his finger on the root of the matter when he says
that to exercise the personal will is still to live in the region where
the imperfect self is the thing most emphasized. Where, on the
contrary, the subconscious forces take the lead, it is more probably
the better self in posse which directs the operation. Instead of being
clumsily and vaguely aimed at from without, it is then itself the
organizing centre. What then must the person do? "He must relax,"
says Dr. Starbuck--"that is, he must fall back on the larger Power that
makes for righteousness, which has been welling up in his own being,
and let it finish in its own way the work it has begun.... The act of
yielding, in this point of view, is giving one's self over to the new
life, making it the centre of a new personality, and living, from
within, the truth of it which had before been viewed objectively."[114]

[114] Starbuck, p. 115.

"Man's extremity is God's opportunity" is the theological way of
putting this fact of the need of self-surrender; whilst the
physiological way of stating it would be, "Let one do all in one's
power, and one's nervous system will do the rest." Both statements
acknowledge the same fact.[115]

[115] Starbuck, p. 113.

To state it in terms of our own symbolism: When the new centre of
personal energy has been subconsciously incubated so long as to be just
ready to open into flower, "hands off" is the only word for us, it must
burst forth unaided!

We have used the vague and abstract language of psychology. But since,
in any terms, the crisis described is the throwing of our conscious
selves upon the mercy of powers which, whatever they may be, are more
ideal than we are actually, and make for our redemption, you see why
self-surrender has been and always must be regarded as the vital
turning-point of the religious life, so far as the religious life is
spiritual and no affair of outer works and ritual