Dante, describing how, on the first terrace of Purgatory, he walked stooping, to be on a level with Oderisi, who went bowed to the ground by the ponderous burden of the pride he had cherished on earth, says—­’I went walking with this heavy-laden soul, just as oxen walk in the yoke’:  this picture almost always comes to me with the words of the Lord, ’Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me.’  Their intent is, ’Take the other end of my yoke, doing as I do, being as I am.’  Think of it a moment:—­to walk in the same yoke with the Son of Man, doing the same labour with him, and having the same feeling common to him and us!  This, and nothing else, is offered the man who would have rest to his soul; is required of the man who would know the Father; is by the Lord pressed upon him to whom he would give the same peace which pervades and sustains his own eternal heart.

But a yoke is for drawing withal:  what load is it the Lord is drawing?  Wherewith is the cart laden which he would have us help him draw?  With what but the will of the eternal, the perfect Father?  How should the Father honour the Son, but by giving him his will to embody in deed, by making him hand to his father’s heart!—­and hardest of all, in bringing home his children!  Specially in drawing this load must his yoke-fellow share.  How to draw it, he must learn of him who draws by his side.

Whoever, in the commonest duties that fall to him, does as the Father would have him do, bears His yoke along with Jesus; and the Father takes his help for the redemption of the world—­for the deliverance of men from the slavery of their own rubbish-laden waggons, into the liberty of God’s husbandmen.  Bearing the same yoke with Jesus, the man learns to walk step for step with him, drawing, drawing the cart laden with the will of the father of both, and rejoicing with the joy of Jesus.  The glory of existence is to take up its burden, and exist for Existence eternal and supreme—­for the Father who does his divine and perfect best to impart his glad life to us, making us sharers of that nature which is bliss, and that labour which is peace.  He lives for us; we must live for him.  The little ones must take their full share in the great Father’s work:  his work is the business of the family.

Starts thy soul, trembles thy brain at the thought of such a burden as the will of the eternally creating, eternally saving God?  ’How shall mortal man walk in such a yoke,’ sayest thou, ’even with the Son of God bearing it also?’

Why, brother, sister, it is the only burden bearable—­the only burden that can be borne of mortal!  Under any other, the lightest, he must at last sink outworn, his very soul gray with sickness!

He on whom lay the other half of the burden of God, the weight of his creation to redeem, says, ’The yoke I bear is easy; the burden I draw is light’; and this he said, knowing the death he was to die.  The yoke did not gall his neck, the burden did not overstrain his sinews, neither did the goal on Calvary fright him from the straight way thither.  He had the will of the Father to work out, and that will was his strength as well as his joy.  He had the same will as his father.  To him the one thing worth living for, was the share the love of his father gave him in his work.  He loved his father even to the death of the cross, and eternally beyond it.