5. It only remains for us now to note the twofold effect of these operations of Jehovah’s grace in the religious and moral condition of the nation. There will be produced, in the first place, a new readiness and power of obedience to the divine commandments.(180) Like the apostle, they will not only “consent unto the law that it is good”;(181) but in virtue of the new “Spirit of life” given to them, they will be in a real sense “free from the law,”(182) because the inward impulse of their own regenerate nature will lead them to fulfil it perfectly. The inefficiency of law as a mere external authority acting on men by hope of reward and fear of punishment was perceived both by Jeremiah and Ezekiel almost as clearly as by Paul, although this conviction on the part of the prophets was based on observation of national depravity rather than on their personal experience. It led Jeremiah to the conception of a new covenant under which Jehovah will write His law on men’s hearts;(183) and Ezekiel expresses the same truth in the promise of a new Spirit inclining the people to walk in Jehovah’s statutes and to keep His judgments. The second inward result of salvation is shame and self‐loathing on account of past transgressions.(184) It seems strange that the prophet should dwell so much on this as a mark of Israel’s saved condition. His strong protest against the doctrine of inherited guilt in the eighteenth chapter would have led us to expect that the members of the new Israel would not be conscious of any responsibility for the sins of the old. But here, as in other instances, the conception of the personified nation proves itself a better vehicle of religious truth from the Old Testament standpoint than the religious relations of the individual. The continuity of the national consciousness sustains that profound sense of unworthiness which is an essential element of true reconciliation to God, although each individual Israelite in the kingdom of God knows that he is not accountable for the iniquity of his fathers. ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐