WHAT YOKES ARE FOR
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 trammelling 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 for? 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
labour 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 a 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 these exactions the marks of its divinity; others
apologising 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 for ever 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 expressions "under the yoke," or "wear
the 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's 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 he 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. Christ's yoke is simply His secret for the
alleviation of human life, His prescription for the best and happiest method of
living. Men harness themselves to the work and stress of the world in clumsy
and unnatural ways. The harness they put on is antiquated. A rough, ill-fitted
collar at the best, they make its strain and friction past enduring, by placing
it where the neck is most sensitive; and by mere continuous irritation this
sensitiveness increases until the whole nature is quick and sore.
This is the origin, among other things, of a
disease called "touchiness"--a disease which, in spite of its innocent name, is
one of the gravest sources of restlessness in the world. Touchiness,
when it becomes chronic, is a morbid condition of the inward disposition. It
is self-love inflamed to the acute point; conceit, with a
hair-trigger. The cure is to shift the yoke to some other place; to let
men and things touch us through some new and perhaps as yet unused
part of our nature; to become meek and lowly in heart while the old
nature is becoming numb from want of use. It is the beautiful work of
Christianity everywhere to adjust the burden of life to those who bear it, and
them to it. It has a perfectly miraculous gift of healing. Without doing
any violence to human nature it sets it right with life, harmonizing it with
all surrounding things, and restoring those who are jaded with the fatigue and
dust of the world to a new grace of living. In the mere matter of altering he
perspective of life and changing the proportions of things, its function in
lightening the care of man is altogether its own. The weight of a load depends
upon the attraction of the earth. But suppose the attraction of the earth were
removed? A ton on some other planet, where the attraction of gravity is less,
does not weigh half a ton. Now Christianity removes the attraction of the
earth, and this is one way in which it diminishes men's burden. It makes them
citizens of another world. What was a ton yesterday is not half a ton today.
So, without changing one's circumstances, merely by offering a wider horizon
and a different standard, it alters the whole aspect of the world.
Christianity as Christ taught it is the truest
philosophy of life ever spoken. But let us be quite sure when we speak of
Christianity that we mean Christ's Christianity. Other versions are either
caricatures, or exaggerations, or misunderstandings, or short-sighted and
surface readings. For the most part their attainment is hopeless and the
results wretched. But I care not who the person is, or through what vale of
tears he has passed, or is about to pass, there is a new life for him
along this path.