spiritual power.

This incorporation, as I see it, would be made for the express purpose
of getting driving force with which to act directly upon life. For
spirituality, as we have seen all along, must not be a lovely fluid
notion or a merely self-regarding education; but an education for
action, for the insertion of eternal values into the time-world, in
conformity with the incarnational philosophy which justifies it. Such
action--such Insertion--depends on constant recourse to the sources of
spiritual power. At present we tend to starve our possible centres of
regeneration, or let them starve themselves, by our encouragement of the
active at the expense of the contemplative life; and till this is
mended, we shall get nothing really done. Forgetting St. Teresa's
warning, that to give our Lord a perfect service, Martha and Mary must
combine,[154] we represent the service of man as being itself an
attention to God; and thus drain our best workers of their energies, and
leave them no leisure for taking in Fresh supplies. Often they are
wearied and confused by the multiplicity in which they must struggle;
and they are not taught and encouraged to seek the healing experience of
unity. Hence even our noblest teachers often show painful signs of
spiritual exhaustion, and tend to relapse into the formal repetition of
a message which was once a burning fire.

The continued force of any regenerative movement depends above all else
on continued vivid contact with the Divine order, for the problems of
the reformer are only really understood and seen in true proportion in
its light. Such contact is not always easy: it is a form of work. After
a time the weary and discouraged will need the support of discipline if
they are to do it. Therefore definite role of silence and
withdrawal--perhaps an extension of that system of periodical retreats