t suggest the right
meaning but fail to carry out that meaning in our lives. All too easily
our religious statements become empty forms, separated from the vitality
and meaning which they are supposed to express. Remember, for instance,
how vainly we sometimes say the Lord's Prayer, which is a form that our
Lord gave us, by means of which we could express the vitality of our
relationship with God and one another. Likewise, we can honor and use
the correct verbal and other symbols about the church and Christian
fellowship, its rites and ceremonies, and yet fail to translate them
into action, with the result that our rites and ceremonies and
doctrinal statements become dry, empty forms. Instead of being the means
of new life, they may only disappoint people, because they do not really
communicate the meaning that they seem to promise. Every church should
always test whether its forms are really expressive of the truth which
it professes. It is not enough that we speak the truth; we must live it.

It has been given to men to communicate both by word and by the life
that is lived. There must always be a vital relation between the meaning
that is being communicated in the word and the form or means of its
communication. The breakdown of education and of religion occurs when
there is a breakdown between the human experience with its meaning and
the word which represents it. This breakdown is complete when speaking
the word becomes a substitute for living its meaning. This breakdown
also occurs when a culture undertakes to educate by means of words and
concepts only, and neglects to employ what happens between man and man
as an integral and indispensable part of the curriculum.

The word and the meaning of the experience belong to each other and need
each other, and the relation between them is a necessary part of
education. Let us use the word "fight" as an illustration. We have this
word because of man's experience in fighting. Out of the relationships
of conflict and combat comes the experience we think of as fighting, and
the word "fight" stands for it. The very young child learns to fight
before he learns the word "fight." So far as he knows, the experience of
fighting exists only between himself and his mother, and it is necessary
for him to discover that fighting is a universal human activity. He
learns the meaning of the word "fight" by the meanings that he brings
out of his own combat, and on the basis of these he beg