Pax Vobiscum | Page 6

It lies
not in emotions, nor in the absence of emotions. It is not a hallowed
feeling that comes over us in church. It is not something that the
preacher has in his voice. It is not in nature, or in poetry, or in
music--though in all these there is soothing. It is the mind at leisure
from itself. It is the perfect poise of the soul; the absolute adjustment of
the inward man to the stress of all outward things; the preparedness
against every emergency; the stability of assured convictions; the
eternal calm of an invulnerable faith; the repose of a heart set deep in
God. It is the mood of the man who says, with Browning, "God's in His
Heaven, all's well with the world."
Two painters each painted a picture to illustrate his conception of rest.
The first chose for his scene a still, lone lake among the far-off
mountains. The second threw on his canvas a thundering waterfall, with
a fragile birch-tree bending over the foam; at the fork of a branch,
almost wet with the cataract's spray, a robin sat on its nest. The first
was only _Stagnation_; the last was Rest. For in Rest there are always
two elements--tranquillity and energy; silence and turbulence; creation
and destruction; fearlessness and fearfulness. This it was in Christ.
It is quite plain from all this that whatever else He claimed to be or to
do, He at least knew how to live. All this is the perfection of living, of
living in the mere sense of passing through the world in the best way.
Hence His anxiety to communicate His idea of life to others. He came,
He said, to give men life, true life, a more abundant life than they were
living; "the life," as the fine phrase in the Revised Version has it, "that
is life indeed." This is what He himself possessed, and it was this which
He offers to all mankind. And hence His direct appeal for all to come to
Him who had not made much of life, who were weary and heavy-laden.
These He would teach His secret. They, also, should know "the life that
is life indeed."

WHAT YOKES ARE FOR
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 trammelling 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
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