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I. ITS MANWARD ASPECT. Consider —

1. Its vivifying influence. It produces new spiritual life in the souls of men.

2. Its deadly influence. There are principles which render it certain that the men who reject it will be injured by it. One is founded in eternal justice, and the other two in the moral constitution of man.

(1) The greater the mercy abused the greater the condemnation. The Bible is full of this truth. "Unto whomsoever much is given," etc. "If I had not come and spoken unto them," etc. "Woe unto thee, Chorazin," etc. "And thou Capernaum," etc. "He that despised Moses' law," etc.

(2) Man's susceptibility of virtuous impressions decreases in proportion to his resistance of them.

(3) Man's moral suffering will always be increased in proportion to the consciousness he has that he once had the means of being happy. From these principles the gospel must prove "the savour of death unto death" to those who reject it. The hearing of the gospel puts a man on a new level in the universe. To have heard its accents is the most momentous fact in the history of man. Do you say you will hear it no more? But you have heard it. This is a fact which you will ever remember and feel. If the gospel does not save you, better you had never been born.

II. ITS GODWARD ASPECT. In both cases, if we are true to it, "we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ." The true ministry is pleasing to God, whatever may be its results on humanity. If this be so, two inferences seem irresistible.

1. If the gospel ministry is in itself grateful to God, it must be in itself an institution for good, and for good exclusively. Never could an institution in itself calculated to deaden and destroy the soul of men be grateful to the heart of infinite love.

(1) While the true gospel ministry saves by design, it destroys in spite of its design. That it is designed to save, who can doubt? "God so loved the world," etc. Men can, men do, pervert Divine things. Did God give steel to be brought into weapons for the destruction of human life? Did He give corn to be transmuted into a substance to drown the reason and to brutalise the man? No! But man, by his perverting power, turns God's blessings to an improper and pernicious use. So it is with the gospel. He wrests it to his own destruction.

(2) The true gospel ministry saves by its inherent tendency; it injures in spite of that tendency. Is there anything in the doctrines, precepts, provisions, promises, and warnings, of the gospel adapted to destroy souls? Was the ocean made to injure man, because it has terrified many a mariner and engulfed many a barque? Was the sun created to injure man, because by leading to the discovery of the robber and the assassin, it has proved their ruin? Was food created to injure health, because by intemperance and gluttony, it has brought on disease and death?

(3) That the gospel ministry saves by Divine agency; it destroys in spite of that agency. "Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost."

2. If the gospel ministry is in itself grateful to God, it must be an institution from which a much larger amount of good than of evil will result. If greater evil resulted from it than good, I cannot believe that it would be grateful to infinite love. Remember —

(1) That the rejection of the gospel does not make the hell of the rejector; it only modifies and aggravates it. As a sinner he would have found a hell, had the sound of the gospel never greeted his ears.

(2) The restorative influence which the gospel ministry haft already exerted upon the race, It has swept from the world innumerable evils; it has planted institutions amongst us to mitigate human woe, abolish human oppression, heal human diseases, remove human ignorance, and correct human errors; and it has conducted millions to heaven.

(3) That what the gospel has done is but a very small instalment of the good it is destined to achieve. It is to bless a nation in a day. There are millennial ages awaiting it, and in the coming centuries it will be found that the evil which the gospel ministry has occasioned is no more to be compared with the good which it will cause than the pain which the light of the sun gives to the few tender eyes, with the streams of blessedness it pours into every part of nature.

(D. Thomas, D. D.)

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KJV: For we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish:

WEB: For we are a sweet aroma of Christ to God, in those who are saved, and in those who perish;