When Jesus turned His gaze from the fields of industrial life, and from the book of remembrance of the past to the book of the life of His own generation. He discovered a nation under the yoke, a race under the harrow. He hit the mark when He spoke of yokes. His audience was made up of those who were wearing yokes of all sorts and sizes, but no man with his own yoke harnessed on exactly as his neighbour's. On the other hand, that audience was suffering under an intolerable strain. Three yokes were galling and killing them —(1) the yoke of the Law, (2) of Rome, (3) of sin. Their leaders (Mt 23^) bound grievous burdens on the people's shoulders ; nor would they remove them. Of some it was the constant temptation to tlirow off the yoke of the foreigner. The Zealots (Lk 6"^) were mo.st restive under Rome. They wer(> the political Nationalists of the day. Again, who of them all was not ' sold under sin ' (Ro 7") ?
These were the yokes of the people. The yoke of Jesus was the will of the Father. He wore it always, never worked without it ; never against it, always with it (Jn 8^^). Once He asked thrice if He might take it off (Mt 2&'^«-) for the road was steep. The yoke of Jesus was the welfare of man. He came to serve (Mk IQ-'^). To be Saviour was at once the lowliest, loftiest, and loneliest way of working out the welfare of man. And this yoke was tied on Avith cords of love (Jn 13^) unto the end. The humanity of Jesus was His yoke. He was, not the angel (He 2^- ^s), but the man Christ Jesus (1 Ti 2') ; and He did the perfect will of the Father under this yoke, frail but firm — the body of His humiliation.
Literature.— Bishop Thorold's The Yokeof Christ ; Expositor, I. vi. [1877] 142, vii. [1878] 348, xi. [1880] 101 ; Exp. Times, iii. [1892] 512, vi. [1895] 176 ; Henry Drummoiid, Pax Vobiscum, 41 ; W. A. Butler, Sermons, ii 320 ; G. A. Chadwick, Pilate's Gift, 62 ; G. Macdonald, Hope of the Gospel, 152.
John R. Legge. YOUNG MAN. — In the Gospels we have on four occasions incidents of importance described, in which ' a young man ' (veavi(7Kos, not veavLas [as in Ac 7" of Saul, 203 of Eutychus, 231^ of St. Paul's nephew]) is one of the figures.
1. St. Matthew (ig^o- -"^ ; cf. Mk 10^^ Lk 18^8) de- scribes by this name the 'ruler' Avho asked our Lord what he must do to inherit eternal life. It adds to the pathos of the scene to know that this man, who ' went away sorrowful ' because he could not give up his great possessions in the quest for life, was still so youthful as to be called veavlcrKos. He had not reached the prime of life,* when the love of money liad cankered his heart and soul.
2. The widow's only son at Nain, who was being carried out to burial when our Lord touched the bier and raised him to life, was comparatively young : our Lord called him veavlane when He bade him arise (Lk 7"). An additional touch is given to the beauty of the miracle if we may infer the mother's early widoM'hood and the youth's career of promise cut short, for which the Saviour's gift of life restored (iSo^Kev avrdv, v.^^) made ample and unexpected compensation.
3. St. Mark (U^i-^-) records a brief and some- what mysterious incident, which occurred on the way from Gethsemane to the higli priest's palace on the night of the Betrayal. When ' all the dis- ciples forsook him and fled ' there ' followed with him ' still ' a certain young man ' who had ' a linen cloth cast about him, over his naked body.' Per- haps he had been roused from sleep that night, and
* The word ►e«kV«o,' stands for anj- age from bo\hood up to 40 years. See Liddell and Scott, s.v., and cf. Swete's note on Mk ion
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so had nothing but his bed-robe on as he rushed from the house to see what was taking place at the garden. And when some of the ' multitude with swords and staves' who arrested Christ tried to lay hold on him also, he escaped, but left the linen cloth behind him in their gra-sp. Evidently the slight event had some special association for St. Mark with the memories of that night, and it has been conjectured that the veaviffKos is, in fact, the Evangelist himself ; and, further, that he Avas a member of the household where the Last Supper had just been eaten, perhaps the son of the olKo5ecirbT7)s \v.^*). Others, with less probability, have wished to identify him with St. John or with St. James the Lord's brother (see Swete's notes, in loc. ). In art he is sometimes represented as the keeper of the garden (Vortolano : see Mrs. Jameson's Hist, of our Lord in Art, vol. ii. p. 43). Bengel's inference (locuples igitur erat, Mt 11*) tallies well with the idea that he was John Mark (see Ac 12^^) 4. According to Mk 16^, he who appeared to the
women at the sepulchre on the morning of the Re- surrection was ' a young man sitting on the right side, arrayed in a white robe.' In St. Matthew's account he is described as ' an angel of the Lord ' (28^), while St. Luke tells us of ' two men in shin- ing garments' who spoke to them (24'' : but in v.^^ ' a vision of angels '). In apt illustration of St. Mark's version Swete quotes 2 Mac 3^®- ^ 5vo ecpd- V7}aav avT(^ veaviai . . . diaTrpeTre'is T-qv TrepL^ok^v . . . ol avTol vtaviai wolKlv €(pdv7]crav Tt^ 'HXiodJipiji iv raTs avTois iffdricreai ecrroKLafMivoL ; and Jos. Ant. V. viii. 2, where the angel who appears to Manoali's wife is (pdvTaafia . . . veavig. /caXc^ irapaTrX-qcnov /xeydXtii. Cf. also Evang. Petr. §§9, 11, and 13.