But even if, in accordance with Bousset's reconstruction, the title "Lord" was applied to Jesus under the influence of the ecstatic conditions that prevailed in the meetings of the Church, the origin of the title is not yet explained. How did the Christians at Antioch come to think that their ecstatic experiences were due to the fact that Jesus was presiding over their meetings? And if they did come to think so, why did they choose just the title "Lord" in order to express the dignity that they desired to attribute to Him? At this point, Bousset has recourse to a comparison with the surrounding paganism. The term "Lord," he says, was common in the Hellenistic age as a title of the cult-gods of the various forms of worship. And the material which Bousset has collected in proof of this assertion is entirely convincing. Not only in the worship of the Emperors and other rulers, but also in the Hellenized religions of the East, the title "Lord" was well known as a designation of divinity. Indeed, Paul himself refers plainly to the currency of the title. "For though there be," he says, "that are called gods, whether in heaven or on earth; as there are gods many, and lords many; yet to us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we unto him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him" (1 Cor. viii. 5, 6). In this passage, the "lords many" are of course heathen gods, and it is clearly implied that the term "lord" was the title which was given them by their own worshipers. Bousset is entirely correct, therefore, when he says that the title "Lord," at Antioch, at Tarsus, and everywhere in the Greco-Roman world, was clearly a title of divinity. Indeed, it may be added, the word "lord" was no whit inferior in dignity to the term "god."[230] When the early Christian missionaries, therefore, called Jesus "Lord," it was perfectly plain to their pagan hearers everywhere that they meant to ascribe divinity to Him and desired to worship Him. [230] Warfield, "'God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,'" in _The Princeton Theological Review_, xv, 1917, p. 18.