The great ocean itself, as it rolls and it swells,
In the bonds of a boundless obedience dwells.”
The next section takes up the same theme under another heading, and with a fresh set of variations.
THE SERVICE OF FREEDOM.
St. Matthew xi. 29, 30.
It is in tones of winning promise and invitation that men are offered the wearing of Christ’s yoke. Let all who are weary and heavy laden come to Him: come, that they may take His yoke upon them. There is a seeming paradox in the invitation. Should not the weary be invited by promised freedom from all yoke-bearing? Should not the heavy-laden be attracted by a pledge of entire immunity from burdens grievous to be borne, whether heavy or light? Not so. Christ’s yoke is easy, but it is a yoke. The burden he imposes is light, but a burden of some sort He does impose. Being made free from sin, men become the servants—servitors, slaves even, δοῦλοι, of righteousness. But in so being made free from sin, and becoming servants, δοῦλοι, to God, they have their fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. And the yoke of privilege promised by Christ differs from the irksome bonds and rigid constraint of scribes and rabbis; a yoke which, says St. Peter, neither we nor our fathers were able to bear, inasmuch as it implies and involves a purely spiritual service—that we should serve (δουλεύειν) in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter. “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”
Keble says of men, in the “Christian Year,” that,
“Freely they own, or heedless prove,
The curse of lawless hearts, the joy of self-control.”