We must not imagine that, when the Lord says, 'Take my yoke upon you,'
he means a yoke which he lays on those that come to him; 'my yoke' is
the yoke he wears himself, the yoke his father lays upon him, the yoke
out of which, that same moment, he speaks, bearing it with glad
patience. 'You must take on you the yoke I have taken: the Father lays
it upon us.'

The best of the good wine remains; I have kept it to the last. A friend
pointed out to me that the Master does not mean we must take on us a
yoke like his; we must take on us the very yoke he is carrying.

Dante, describing how, on the first terrace of Purgatory, he walked
stooping, to be on a level with Oderisi, who went bowed to the ground by
the ponderous burden of the pride he had cherished on earth, says--'I
went walking with this heavy-laden soul, just as oxen walk in the yoke':
this picture almost always comes to me with the words of the Lord, 'Take
my yoke upon you, and learn of me.' Their intent is, 'Take the other end
of my yoke, doing as I do, being as I am.' Think of it a moment:--to
walk in the same yoke with the Son of Man, doing the same labour with
him, and having the same feeling common to him and us! This, and nothing
else, is offered the man who would have rest to his soul; is required of
the man who would know the Father; is by the Lord pressed upon him to
whom he would give the same peace which pervades and sustains his own
eternal heart.

But a yoke is for drawing withal: what load is it the Lord is drawing?
Wherewith is the cart laden which he would have us help him draw? With
what but the will of the eternal, the perfect Father? How should the
Father honour the Son, but by giving him his will to embody in deed, by
making him hand to his father's heart!--and hardest of all, in bringing