The final chapter, 2 Corinthians 13, answers a challenge which he kept for the last place, as indeed it ill became the Corinthians above all men. What a distress to him to speak of it at all! They had actually dared to ask a proof that Christ had spoken to them by him! Had they forgotten that they owed their life and salvation in Christ to his preaching? As he put in the foreground patience as a sign of apostleship, which in him assuredly was taxed beyond measure, so now he fixes on this as the great seal of his apostleship—at least, to them. What can be more touching? It is not what Jesus had said by him in books, or in what power the Spirit had wrought by him “Since ye seek a proof of Christ speaking in me, which to you-ward is not weak, but is mighty in you examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves.” They were the living proof to themselves that he was an Apostle of Christ to them. There is no allowance of a doubt in this appeal: rather the very reverse was assumed on their part, which the Apostle admirably turns to the confusion of their indecorous and baseless doubts about himself. “Therefore I write these things being absent, lest being present I should use sharpness, according to the power which the Lord hath given me to edification, and not to destruction.” Brief and pregnant salutations follow, with the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit.