st has been used so generally for so many centuries as a _name_
that we forget that originally it was a title, and not a name.

And it still is a title, though used chiefly as a name. Some day the
title-meaning will overlap the name-meaning. We may never cease thinking
of it as a name, but there is a time coming when events will make the
title-meaning so big as to clear over-shadow our thought and use of it
as a name.

It helps to recall the distinctive meaning of the words we use for Him
who walked amongst, and was one of us. Jesus is His _name_. It belongs
to the _man_. It belongs peculiarly to the thirty-three years and a bit
more that He was here, even though not exclusively used in that way in
the Book.

There's a rare threefold sweetness of meaning in that five-lettered
name. There is the meaning of the old word lying within the name, before
it became a name, victory, victor, saviour-victor, Jehovah-victor. There
is the swing and rhythm and murmur of music, glad joyous music, in its
very beginnings as a common word.

Then it has come to stand wholly for a _personality_, the rarely gentle,
winsome, strong personality of the Man of Bethlehem and Nazareth, and of
those crowded service-days. And every memory of His personality sweetens
and enriches the music in the old word.

And then the deepest significance, the richest rhythm, the sweetest
melody, come from the meaning His experiences, His life, pressed into
it. The sympathy, the suffering, the wilderness, the Cross, the
Resurrection, all the experiences He went through, these give to this
victory-word, Jesus, a meaning unknown before. They put the name Jesus
actually above every name in the experiences of tense conflict and
sweeping victory it stands for. This threefold chording makes music
never to be broken nor forgotten.

"There is no name so sweet on earth,
No name so sweet in heaven,
The name before His wondrous birth,
To Christ the Saviour given."

Lord is a title, of course. It was used of one who was a proprietor, an
owner, or a master. It was commonly used as a title of honour for one in
superior position, as a leader or teacher. In speaking of Jesus it is
coupled with the title Christ as an interchangeable word,[10] as well as
an additional title. But peculiarly it is the _personal title_ given
Jesus by one who takes Him as his own personal Master,[11] while it
still retains its broader meaning.

But _Christ_ is peculiarly _the officia