is to say we recognize the channels by the fact of the stream flowing
through them; and one of our most common mistakes is in thinking that we
ourselves have to fix the particular channel beforehand. We say in effect
that the Spirit cannot open other channels, and so we stop them up. Or we
say, our past experience speaks to the contrary, thus assuming that our
past experiences have included all possibilities and have exhausted the
laws of the universe, an assumption which is negatived by every fresh
discovery even in physical science. And so we go on limiting the power of
the Spirit in a hundred different ways.

But careful consideration will show that, though the modes in which we
limit it are as numerous as the circumstances with which we have to deal,
the thing with which we limit it is always the same--it is by the
introduction of our own personality. This may appear at first a direct
contradiction of all that I have said about the necessity for the Personal
Factor, but it is not. Here is a paradox.

To open out into manifestation the wonderful possibilities hidden in the
Creative Power of the Universe we require to do two things--to see that we
ourselves are necessary as centers for focussing that power, and at the
same time to withdraw the thought of ourselves as contributing anything to
its efficiency. It is not I that work but the Power; yet the Power needs me
because it cannot specialize itself without me--in a word each is the
complementary of the other: and the higher the degree of specialization is
to be the more necessary is the intelligent and willing co-operation of the
individual.

This is the Scriptural paradox that "the son can do nothing of himself,"
and yet we are told to be "fellow-workers with God." It ceases to be a
paradox, however, when we realize the relation between the two factors