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 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 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 these