The religious life does have its own content and an independent value. It remains the center, the heart, the hearth, out of which all [the Christian’s] thought and action proceeds and from which it receives inspiration and warmth. There, in fellowship with God, he is strengthened for his labor and girds himself for the battle. But that hidden life of fellowship with God is not the whole of life. The prayer room is the inner chamber, but not the whole dwelling in which he lives and moves. The spiritual life does not exclude domestic and civic, social and political life, the life of art and scholarship. To be sure, it is distinct from these things. It also transcends them by far in value, but it does not constitute an irreconcilable opposition to them; rather, it is the power that enables us faithfully to fulfill our earthly vocation and makes all of life a serving of God.
Herman Bavinck as cited in Jan Veenhof, Nature and Grace in Herman Bavinck, trans. Albert M. Wolters (Souix Center, IA: Dordt College Press, 2006), 29-30.