+I. Supplicates the best blessing on the truly righteous.+--"As many as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God" (ver. 16). Jewish discipline and pagan culture are for ever discredited by the new creation of moral virtue. The rule of the renewed inward life supersedes the works of the condemned flesh. On all who seek to regulate their lives according to this rule the apostle invokes the peace and mercy of God. Peace is followed by the mercy which guards and restores it. Mercy heals backslidings and multiplies pardons. She loves to bind up a broken heart or a rent and distracted Church. For the betrayers of the cross he has stern indignation and alarms of judgment. Towards his children in the faith nothing but peace and mercy remains in his heart. As an evening calm shuts in a tempestuous day, so this blessing concludes the epistle so full of strife and agitation. We catch in it once more the chime of the old benediction, which through all storm and peril ever rings in ears attuned to its note: "Peace shall be upon Israel" (Ps. cxxv. 5). +II. Pleads the brand of suffering for loyalty to Christ as conclusive proof of authority.+--"From henceforth let no man trouble me: for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus" (ver. 17). The apostle has sufficiently vindicated his authority by facts and arguments, and he would effectually silence all quibbles on this subject by triumphantly pointing to the marks of suffering on his own body received in his Master's service. These marks he carried wherever he went, like the standard-bearer of an army who proudly wears his scars. No man would have suffered as Paul did unless he was convinced of the importance of the truth he had received and of his supernatural call to declare the same. Suffering is the test of devotion and fidelity. For a picture of the harassed, battered, famished sufferer in the cause of Christ and His Gospel read 2 Cor. iv. 8-10, xi. 23-28. Marks of suffering are more eloquent than words. The highest eminence of moral perfection and influence cannot be reached without much suffering. It is a callous nature indeed that is not touched with the sight of suffering heroically endured. The calm bravery of the early Christians under the most fiendish persecution won many a convert to the truth.