There is still one doubt to clear up. After the statement, "Learn
of Me," Christ throws in the disconcerting qualification:
"TAKE MY YOKE upon you, and learn of Me."
Why, if all this be true, does He call it a YOKE? Why, while
professing to give Rest, does He with the next breath whisper
"BURDEN"? Is the Christian life, after all, what its enemies take
it for--an additional weight to the already great woe of life,
some extra punctiliousness about duty, some painful devotion to
observances, some heavy restriction and trammeling of all that is
joyous and free in the world? Is life not hard and sorrowful enough
without being fettered with yet another yoke?
It is astounding how so glaring a misunderstanding of this plain
sentence should ever have passed into currency. Did you ever stop
to ask what a yoke is really? Is it to be a burden to the animal
which wears it? It is just the opposite. It is to make its burden
light. Attached to the oxen in any other way than by a yoke, the
plough would be intolerable. Worked by means of a yoke, it is
light. A yoke is not an instrument of torture; it is
An instrument of mercy.
It is not a malicious contrivance for making work hard; it is a
gentle device to make hard labor light. It is not meant to give
pain, but to save pain. And yet men speak of the yoke of Christ
as if it were slavery, and look upon those who wear it as objects
of compassion. For generations we have had homilies on "The Yoke
of Christ"--some delighting in portraying its narrow exactions;
some seeking in those exactions the marks of its divinity; others
apologizing for it, and toning it down; still others assuring us
that, although it be very bad, it is not to be compared with the
positive blessings of Christianity. How many, especially among
the young, has this one mistaken phrase driven forever away from
the kingdom of God? Instead of making Christ attractive, it makes
Him out a taskmaster, narrowing life by petty restrictions, calling
for self-denial where none is necessary, making misery a virtue
under the plea that it is the yoke of Christ, and happiness criminal
because it now and then evades it. According to this conception,
Christians are at best the victims of a depressing fate; their
life is a penance; and their hope for the next world purchased by
a slow martyrdom in this.
The mistake has arisen from taking the word "yoke" here in the same
sense as in the expression "under the yoke," or "wear he yoke in
his youth." But in Christ's illustration it is not the "jugum" of
the Roman soldier, but the simple "harness" or "ox-collar" of the
Eastern peasant. It is the literal wooden yoke which He, with His
own hands in the carpenter shop, had probably often made. He knew
the difference between a smooth yoke and a rough one, a bad fit
and a good fit; the difference also it made to the patient animal
which had to wear it. The rough yoke galled, and the burden was
heavy; the smooth yoke caused no pain, and the load was lightly
drawn. The badly fitted harness was a misery; the well-fitted
collar was "easy."
And what was the "burden"? It was not some special burden laid upon
the Christian, some unique infliction that they alone must bear.
It was what all men bear. It was simply life, human life itself,
the general burden of life which all must carry with them from the
cradle to the grave. Christ saw that men took life painfully. To
some it was a weariness, to others a failure, to many a tragedy,
to all a struggle and a pain. How to carry this burden of life
had been the whole world's problem. It is still the whole world's
problem. And here is Christ's solution: "Carry it as I do. Take
life as I take it. Look at it from My point of view. Interpret
it upon My principles. Take My yoke and learn of me, and you will
find it easy. For my yoke is easy, works easily, sits right upon
the shoulders, and THEREFORE My burden is light."
There is no suggestion here that religion will absolve any man from
bearing burdens. That would be to absolve him from living, since
it is life itself that is the burden. What Christianity does
propose is to make it tolerable.