Article December 21, 1981 Issue

"Take my yoke ..."

HELEN R. CONROYD

The story is told of Gaspard de Coligny, Admiral of France, who during the sixteenth-century religious persecutions was urged by his wife to declare publicly his conversion to Protestantism. "It is wise," he's reported as saying, "to count the cost of becoming a true Christian."

"It is wiser," his wife answered, "to count the cost of not becoming a true Christian."^{Quoted in Mary Baker Eddy, Miscellaneous Writings, p. 281.}

Being a true Christian has never been what might be called—in the usual sense—an easy way of life. Not even for the master Christian. What did it cost him? Mockery, desertion, scourging, crucifixion. And yet he said to those burdened ones of his time, and ours: "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me .... For my yoke is easy."^{Matt. 11:29, 30.} Easy? The New English Bible gives an enlightening sense of this word "easy": "My yoke," it says, "is good to bear."