“A third fact,” said Scaurus, “is that the Christians, from a very early period, used the word ‘yoke’ in a depreciatory sense to mean the ‘bondage’—as they called it—of the Law of Moses. Paul calls the latter ‘the yoke of bondage.’ The Christians, at their first public council, speak of it as ‘a yoke’; and a Christian writer named Barnabas says that ‘the new law’ is ‘without the yoke of necessity.’ I suspect that among the Greeks and Romans the servile associations of ‘yoke’ have also tended to the disuse of the term among the Christians of the west. You may object that the associations of ‘cross’ are still more disgraceful than those of ‘yoke.’ But I do not think they would be so for Christians, who regarded the disgrace of the cross as a step upward to what they call ‘the crown of life.’ Indeed I am rather surprised that Matthew’s tradition ‘Take my yoke upon you’ has been retained at all, even by a single evangelist.”
Most of this was new to me. But, even if it was true—as seemed to me not unlikely—the same conclusion followed as above. The mistake derogated from Mark, not from Christ. Indeed Scaurus’s interpretation seemed to me to exalt Christ. For might not some people, of austere and fanatical minds, find it easier to “take up the cross,” that is, to lacerate and torture themselves, than to “take up the yoke,” that is, to make their lives subservient to the community in a spirit of willing self-sacrifice? Indeed Scaurus himself said, “If I am right, the Christians have lost by this misunderstanding. When I say ‘lost,’ I mean ‘lost in respect of morality.’ For some may ‘take up the cross’ like the priests of Cybele, finding a pleasure in gashing themselves—such is human nature. But it is not so exciting a thing to ‘take up the yoke’ if it implies making oneself a drudge for life to commonplace people.”
This seemed very true. And afterwards I was not surprised to find that the fourth gospel contains no precept to “take up the cross.” But it commands Christians to “love one another”—a precept that nowhere occurs in Mark. Also what Scaurus said about “making oneself a drudge” was, in effect, inculcated by the fourth gospel where it commands the disciples to “wash one another’s feet.” Sometimes I have asked why this gospel did not restore the old tradition about “yoke.” Perhaps the writer avoided it as he avoids “faith,” and “repentance,” and other technical terms that might come between Christians and Christ. Scaurus himself said, “There seems to me more morality in the old rule of Moses, ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’ than in either ‘Take up the cross’ or ‘Take up the yoke.’ If ever this Christian superstition were to overrun the world, I could conceive of a time when half the Christians might fight with the war-cry of ‘the yoke,’ and the other half with the war-cry of ‘the cross,’ cutting one another’s throats for these emblems. But I could not so easily conceive of a time when men would ever cut one another’s throats with the war-cry, ‘We love one another’.”
These words of Scaurus seemed to me at the time to be quite true. Now, forty-five years afterwards, they seem to me true as to fact, but not quite true as to interpretation. For, since what Scaurus called “the old rule of Moses” included “Love God,” as well as “Love thy neighbour,” it followed that the Lord Jesus, in saying “Take my yoke,” meant “Serve God,” as well as “Serve man.” And, in order to serve God, must not one be prepared to suffer, as God also is called “longsuffering”? And of such “suffering” can there be any better emblem than Christ’s cross?
I cannot honestly deny the force of the evidence adduced by Scaurus to prove that the Saviour did not really utter the precept of “taking up the cross,” and that He did utter the precept of “taking up the yoke.” But I can honestly accept the former as an interpretation of the latter, an interpretation fit for Greeks and Romans when the gospel was first preached, and likely to be fit for all the races of the world till the time of the coming of the Lord. If Scaurus is right, only the precept of the yoke was inculcated by Christ in word. But all agree that the precept of the cross was inculcated by Christ in act. Both metaphors seem needed, and many more, to help the disciples of the Lord to apprehend the nature of His Kingdom, or Family.
CHAPTER XXII
SCAURUS ON MARK
Scaurus continued as follows: “I now come to a passage where Mark represents Christ as saying, ‘Whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, the Son of man also shall be ashamed of him.’ This suggests to me for the first time (re-perusing these strange books after an interval of more than twenty years) that I may have been blaming Mark for not doing what, as a fact, he had no intention of doing—I mean, for not giving a collection of Christ’s utterances in connexion with the ‘good news.’ If we were to question Mark about the expression ‘me and my words,’ and to say, ‘What words do you refer to?’ perhaps he might reply, ‘I do not profess to give Christ’s words, but only their tenor.’ Perhaps Mark has in view a person, or character, rather than any gospel of ‘words.’ And I think I ought to have explained that, at the very outset of his work, Mark described a divine Voice (a thing frequently mentioned in Jewish traditions of the present day about their rabbis) calling from heaven to Christ, ‘Thou art my beloved Son.’ It is this perhaps that Mark may consider a ‘gospel,’ namely, that God, instead of sending prophets to the Jews, as in old days, now sends a Son.”