whatever might discourage some humble man of heart with a sense of unfitness, with the fear, perhaps conviction that the promise was not for him; as if some one might say, ’Alas, I am proud, and neither poor in spirit nor meek; I am at times not at all hungry after righteousness; I am not half merciful, and am very ready to feel hurt and indignant:  I am shut out from every blessing!’ the Lord, knowing the multitudes that can urge nothing in their own favour, and sorely feel they are not blessed, looks abroad over the wide world of his brothers and sisters, and calls aloud, including in the boundless invitation every living soul with but the one qualification of unrest or discomfort, ’Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’

THE YOKE OF JESUS.

At that time Jesus answered and said,—­according to Luke, In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said,—­’I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.  Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight.

’All things are delivered unto me of my father; and no man knoweth the son,’—­according to Luke, ’who the son is,’—­’but the father; neither knoweth any man the father,’—­according to Luke, ’who the father is,’—­’save the son, and he to whomsoever the son will reveal him.’—­Matthew xi. 25—­27; Luke x. 21, 22.

’Come unto me, all ye that labour, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’ Matthew xi. 28—­30.

The words of the Lord in the former two of these paragraphs, are represented, both by Matthew and by Luke, as spoken after the denunciation of the cities of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum; only in Luke’s narrative, the return of the seventy is mentioned between; and there the rejoicing of the Lord over the Father’s revelation of himself to babes, appears to have reference to the seventy.  The fact that the return of the seventy is not mentioned elsewhere, leaves us free to suppose that the words were indeed spoken on that occasion.  The circumstances, however, as circumstances, are to us of little importance, not being necessary to the understanding of the words.

The Lord makes no complaint against the wise and prudent; he but recognizes that they are not those to whom his father reveals his best things; for which fact and the reasons of it, he thanks, or praises his father.  ’I bless thy will:  I see that thou art right:  I am of one mind with thee:’  something of each of these phases of meaning seems to belong to the Greek word.