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204   NEW CHURCH LIFE.   [April,

SPIRITUAL RECESSION.

A SERMON BY BISHOP N. D. PENDLETON

"If ye say, We will not dwell in this land . . . saying No, but we will go into the land of Egypt, where we shall see no war, and shall not hear the sound of the trumpet and shall not hunger for bread, and there will we dwell. . . . But if ye set your faces to enter into Egypt, and go to sojourn there, it shall be, that the sword which ye fear shall overtake you there in the land of Egypt; and the famine whereof ye were afraid shall follow hard after you there in Egypt, and there ye shall die; so shall it be with all the men who set their faces to go into Egypt to sojourn there; they shall die by the sword, by the famine, and by pestilence, none of them shall remain or escape from the evil which I will bring upon them . . . and ye shall be for an execration, an astonishment, and a curse, and a reproach, and ye shall see this place no more." (Jeremiah xlii:13-18.)

Israel's journey from Egypt to Canaan represents the process of regeneration-from natural becoming spiritual.

The process is represented by a journey from one place to another; the place from which the journey is taken representing the natural; that to which it leads, the spiritual.

From place to place is, therefore, from state to state, the journey signifying a change. This is a spiritual journey. In the spiritual world all movements are a result of change of state. In the material world natural journeys are a potent means of bringing about mental changes. Alterations in the natural environment in the world invite a corresponding change in the mind. Such an alteration produces in the spiritual world a change in the external spiritual environment. This change then takes the form of a journey as from one place to another.

For this reason, the process of regeneration and the establishment of a Church is in the Word pictured by the journey of Israel from Egypt to Canaan. Indeed that historic event was designed and carried out for the sake of this spiritual representation. Israel was induced to represent a spiritual Church from its