3. Ease comes by practice. When we have fully surrendered ourselves to Christ, the yoke becomes easy and the burden light. To yield to Christ, to obey His conditions, brings us into harmony with the eternal order of things, and makes us realize this ; we know, when once we have yielded and obeyed, that we are in the spiritual position — if one may employ the phrase — where we have all along, although perhaps without understanding it, wanted to be ; and they who hear Christ's call and answer to it are sure, so soon as their responsive movement towards the calling Christ is made, that the soul's questions are settled once for all, 1 W. F. Adeney. ■ Bishop A. F. W. Ingram.
ST. MATTHEW xi. 29, 30 275
the soul's requirements met and its instinctive, deep-seated capacities filled. It is difficult to force ourselves to the yoke; but once it is taken up, the yoke fits, sits lightly, does not fret or gall. Christ is found to do no violence to the soul. Keally to accept Christ's conditions is to find ourselves where we want to be, set going on the true and satisfying line of life. We give ourselves to Christ — and in that surrender we, so to say, receive ourselves back again, made great and free. Christ's whole method and spirit of life, once we comprehend and accept it, comes to us as the one right and natural thing.
^f We know what a galling bondage an uncongenial service may be; we know, on the other hand, what a genuine, an unalloyed delight that work is which is absolutely congenial. We make most of our children learn some musical instrument or other. But to many a boy the hours he spends at the piano are sheer drudgery. His practice-hour is Egyptian task-work to him. He has no taste or aptitude for music. But watch the man with music in his soul at the piano ! Watch a Paderewski play ! His hands ripple over the keys in a kind of ecstasy. Playing is not task-work to him, it is a rapturous delight. It is congenial work. When sons are growing up and the time draws near when they must face life for themselves, their parents' great anxiety is to discover what their special aptitudes are, for in the long-run no man can be really happy or useful in his work unless he has some taste and fitness for it. A boy with mechanical aptitudes is unhappy if put to a literary or intellectual calling. A boy with intellectual tastes is wasted if put to mechanical em- ployment. If a man is to be happy and useful he must find a congenial sphere in life. And the law holds good in higher concerns than the choice of a trade or calling. It is valid also in the moral and spiritual realm. If a man is to be at rest and peace, his soul must be in congenial service. And that is why Christ's yoke is easy — the service of God is congenial service.1
Tj At the time of the great Civil War in America, the call went round the land for men to take up the cause of their country's freedom. The men responded, and it was noticed that men whose lives had been made a very burden to them by all sorts of trifles, men who were always suffering friction and irritation because little things went wrong, men who, perhaps, could not stand any little trial or trouble without becoming almost unen- durable to live with — these were the people who, not groaning and
1 J. D. Jones.
276 REST UNDER THE YOKE
making a misery of it, but with a certain exultation of the heart, took upon them the great yoke of their country's emancipation, and straightway all the little burdens were forgotten, they became absolutely trivial and insignificant, and the burden that they bore was light.1
TJ Matthew Henry characteristically says that Christ's yoke is " lined with love " ; and St. Bernard cried in his distant day, " 0 blessed burden that makes all burdens light ! 0 blessed yoke that bears the bearer up ! "
II.
The Lesson.
"Learn of me."
1. We understand now why Jesus adds, "Learn of me." To take His yoke is to be trained in His school. It was a common thing for Jewish teachers to issue such invitations, just as to-day men issue prospectuses. Here, for instance, is a passage from the book of Sirach, written several centuries before the birth of Jesus : "Draw near unto me ye unlearned, and lodge in the house of instruction. Say wherefore are ye lacking in these things and your souls are very thirsty ? I opened my mouth and spake. Get her for yourselves without money. Put your neck under the yoke, and let your souls receive instruction. She is hard to find. Behold with your eyes how that I laboured but a little, and found myself much rest." The disciple must sit at his Master's feet, and patiently learn of Him, drinking in His teaching, absorbing His spirit, gradually growing into the knowledge and character that He desires to impart. This is required of the disciple of Christ who would learn His secret of rest.
•[} When He says, " Come unto me, and learn of me," we are not to think merely that we have to learn something ; but we have to know that if we learn it in any other way than from Jesus, it is a lost learning.2