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 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 expressions "under the yoke," or "wear the yoke in his
youth." But in Christ's illustration it is not _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