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SermonIndex.net : Christian Books : Section 138. The Parable of the New Patch on the Old Garment, and of the New Wine in Old Bottles.

The Life Of Jesus Christ In Its Historical Connexion by Augustus Neander

Section 138. The Parable of the New Patch on the Old Garment, and of the New Wine in Old Bottles.

Christ added another illustration in the form of a parable. |No man putteth a piece of a new garment upon an old; if otherwise, then both the new maketh a rent, and the piece that was taken out of the new agreeth not with the old. And no man putteth new wine into old bottles (skins), else the new wine will burst the bottles and be spilled, and the bottles shall perish. But new wine must be put into new bottles, and both are preserved.|

The old nature cannot be renewed by the imposition from without of the exercises of fasting and prayer; no outward and compulsory asceticism can change it. Individual points of character are significant only so far as they are connected with the tendency of the whole life: a reformation in these, indeed, may be enforced, and the stamp and spirit of the life remain unchanged. A fragment of the higher spiritual life, thus broken off from its living connexion (destroyed in the fracture), and forced upon the nature of the old man, would not really improve it; but, on the other hand, by its utter want of adaptation, would worsen the rent in the old nature -- would tear it rudely away from its natural course of developement. A mere renewal from without is at best an artificial, hypocritical thing. The new cloth is torn, and a patch laid upon the old that does not fit it. The new wine is lost, and the old skins perish.

The premature imposition, therefore, of such exercises upon the disciples, instead of developing the new life within them, would have hindered it by mutilating and crippling what they had. Separate branches of the spiritual life, apart from their connexion with the whole, cannot be grafted upon the stem of the old nature; that nature must be renewed from within in order to become a vessel of the Spirit. (In the case of the Apostles, the way was prepared for this by their personal intercourse with the Saviour.) The whole garment had to be new; the wine required new bottles. The new Spirit had of itself to create a new form of life.

Glancing back from this point to the words before spoken on fasting, we may refer them to the privations that lay before the Apostles in their course of duty -- privations which they would joyously go to meet under the impulse of the new Spirit that was to animate them.

But although no outward impulses (no patches upon the old garment) might be needed when the interior life should freely guide, it might yet naturally be the case that |No man, having also drank old wine, straightway desireth new; for, he saith, the old is better.| The disciples had to be weaned gradually from the old life and trained for the new -- a law applicable in all ages of the Church, and which, if faithfully observed, might have saved her from many errors in Christian life and morals.

This example affords another illustration of the truth that individual parts of Christ's teaching cannot be rightly understood apart from their connexion with his whole system of truth.

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