Very profoundly and beautifully does Ezekiel put as the last trait in his picture, and as the upshot of all this cornucopia of blessings, the penitent remembrance of past evils.  Undeserved mercies steal into the heart like the breath of the south wind, and melt the ice.  The more we advance in holiness and consequent blessed communion with God, the more clearly shall we see the evil of our past.  Forgiven sin looks far blacker because it is forgiven.  When we are not afraid of sin’s consequences, we see more plainly its sinfulness.  When we have tasted God’s sweetness, we think with more shame of our ingratitude and folly.  If God forgets, the more reason for us to remember our transgressions.  The man who ‘has forgotten that he was purged from his old sins’ is in danger of finding out that he is not purged from them.  There is no gnawing of conscience, nor any fearful looking for of judgment in such remembrance, but a wholesome humility passing into thankful wonder that such sin is pardoned, and such a sinner made God’s friend.

The deep foundation of all the blessedness is finally laid bare (v. 32) as being God’s undeserved mercy.  ‘For Mine holy name’ (v. 22) is God’s reason.  He is His own motive, and He wills that the world should know His name,—­that is, His manifested character,—­and understand how loving and long-suffering He is.  So He wills, not because such knowledge adds to His glory, but because it satisfies His love, since it will make the men who know His name blessed.  The truth that God’s motive is His own name’s sake may be so put as to be hideous and repellent; but it really proclaims that He is love, and that His motive is His poor creatures’ blessing.

To this great outline of the blessings of the restored nations are appended two subsidiary prophecies, marked by the recurring ’Thus saith the Lord.’  The former of these (vs. 33-36) deals principally with the new beauty that was to clothe the land.  The day in which the inhabitants were cleansed from their sins was to be the day in which the land was to be raised from its ruin.  Cities are to be rebuilt, the ground that had lain fallow and tangled with briers and thorns is to be tilled, and to bloom like Eden, a restored paradise.  How far the fulfilment has halted behind the promise, the melancholy condition of Palestine to-day may remind us.  Whether the literal fulfilment is to be anticipated or no seems less important than to note that the experience of forgiveness (and of the consequent blessings described above) is the precursor of this fair picture.  Therefore, the Church’s condition of growth and prosperity is its realisation in the persons of its individual members, of pardon, the renewal of the inner man by the indwelling Spirit, faithful obedience, communion with God, and lowly remembrance of past sins.  Where churches are marked by such characteristics, they will grow.  If they are not, all their ‘evangelistic efforts’ will be as sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal.