mple of both 'testifying' and exhorting. For the last clause is
not, as our Authorised Version renders it, 'Wherein ye stand'--a
statement of a fact, however true that may be--but a commandment, 'In
which stand fast.' And so we have here the Apostle's all-sufficient
teaching, and this all-comprehensive exhortation. He 'witnesses' that
this is the true grace of God, and because it is, he exhorts, 'stand
fast therein.' Let us look at these two points.

I. Peter's testimony.

Now there is a very beautiful, though not, to superficial readers,
obvious, significance in this testimony. 'This is the true grace of
God.' What is meant by '_this_'? Not merely the teaching which he has
been giving in the preceding part of the letter, but that which somebody
else had been giving. Now these churches in Asia Minor, to whom this
letter was sent, were in all probability founded by the Apostle Paul, or
by men working under his direction: and the type of doctrine preached in
them was what people nowadays call Pauline. And here Peter puts his seal
on the teaching that had come from his brother Apostle, and says: 'The
thing that you have learned, and that I have had no part in
communicating to you, _this_ is the true grace of God.' If such be the
primary application of the words (and I think there can be little doubt
that it is), then we have an interesting evidence, all the stronger
because unobtrusive, of the cordial understanding between the two great
leaders of the Church in apostolic times; and the figments that have
been set forth, with great learning and little common sense, about the
differences that divided these great teachers of Christianity, melt away
into thin air. Their division was only a division of the field of
labour. 'They would that I should go unto the Gentiles, and they unto
the circumcision.' All the evidence confirms what Paul says, 'Whether it
were they or I, so we preach, and so' all the converts 'believed.' Thus
it is not without significance and beauty that we here see dimly through
the ages Peter stretching out his hands to Paul's convert, and saying,
'This--which my beloved brother Paul taught you--this is the true grace
of God.'

But, apart altogether from that thought, note two things; the one, the
substance of this witness-bearing; and the other, Peter's right to bear
it. As to the substance of the testimony; 'grace' which has become a
threadbare word in the minds of many people, used with very little
con