place unless it is regarded as such
by our waiting and recipient hearts.

Further, what right had this man to take this position and say, 'I
testify that this is the true grace of God'? He was no great genius; he
did not know anything about comparative religion, which is nowadays
supposed to be absolutely essential to understanding any one religion.
He was not a scholar or a philosopher. What business had he to bring in
his personality thus, as if he were an authority, and say, '_I_ testify
that this is the true grace of God'?

Well there are two or three answers: one peculiar to him and others
common to all Christian people. The one peculiar to him is, as I
believe, that he was conscious, and rightly conscious, that Jesus Christ
had bestowed upon him the power to witness, and the authority to impose
his testimony upon men as a word from God. In the most inartificial and
matter-of-course way Peter here lets us see the apostolic conception of
apostolic authority. He had a right--not because of what he was
himself, but because of the authority which Christ had conferred on
him--to say to men, 'I do not ask you to give heed to me, Peter. I
myself also am a man (as he said to Cornelius), but I call on you to
accept Christ's word, spoken through me, His commissioned messenger,
when _I_ testify, and through me Christ testifies, that this is the true
grace of God.'

Now no one but an apostle has the right to say that; but we Christian
people have a right to say something like it, and if we have not
apostolic authority, we may have what is very nearly as good, and
sometimes as powerful in its effect upon other people, and that is
authority based on personal experience. If we have plunged deep into the
secrets of God, and lived closely and faithfully in communion with Him,
and for ourselves have found the grace of God, His love and the gifts of
His love, coming into our lives, and ennobling, calming, elevating each
of us; then we, too, have a right to go to men and say, 'Never mind
about me; never mind about whether I am wise or foolish, I do not argue,
but I tell you I have tasted the manna, and it is sweet. I have drunk of
the water, and it comes cool and fresh from the rock. One thing I know,
that whereas I was blind, now I see. I believed, and therefore have I
spoken, and on the strength of my own tasting of it, I testify that
this, which has done so much for me, is the true grace of God.' If we
testify thus, and back up