be pure. So let us do like that poor woman in the Gospel story--bring
our precious alabaster box of ointment--the love of these hearts of
ours, which is the most precious thing we have to give. The box of
ointment that we have so often squandered upon unworthy heads--let us
come and pour it upon His, not unmingled with our tears, and anoint
Him, our beloved and our King. This Man has loved each of us with a
brother's heart; let us love Him with all our hearts.

II. So much for the first name. The second--'Christ'--is the name of
office, and brings to us a Redeemer.

I need not dwell at any length upon the original significance and
force of the name; it is familiar, of course, to us all. It stands as
a transference into Greek of the Hebrew Messias; the one and the
other meaning, as we all know, the 'Anointed.' But what is the
meaning of claiming for Jesus that He is anointed? A sentence will
answer the question. It means that He fulfils all which the inspired
imagination of the great ones of the past had seen in that dim Figure
that rose before prophet and psalmist. It means that He is anointed
or inspired by the divine indwelling to be Prophet, Priest, and King
all over the world. It means that He is--though the belief had faded
away from the minds of His generation--a sufferer whilst a Prince,
and appointed to 'turn away unrighteousness' from the world, and not
from 'Jacob' only, by a sacrifice and a death.

I cannot see less in the contents of the Jewish idea, the prophetic
idea, of the Messias, than these points: divine inspiration or
anointing; a sufferer who is to redeem; the fulfiller of all the
rapturous visions of psalmist and of prophet in the past.