No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new: for he saith, The old is better.
No man also having drunk old wine straightway desireth new; for he saith, The old is better. These are just examples of incongruities in common things. As men's good sense leads them to avoid these in ordinary life, so are there analogous incongruities in spiritual things which the wise will shun. But what has this to do with the question about fasting? Much every way. The genius of the old economy-of whose sadness and bondage "fasting" might be taken as the symbol-was quite different from that of the new, whose characteristic is freedom and joy: the one of these, then, was not to be mixed up with the other. As, in the one case adduced for illustration, "the rent is made worse," and in the other "the new wine is spilled," so 'by a mongrel mixture of the ascetic ritualism of the old with the spiritual freedom of the new economy both are disfigured and destroyed.' The parable about preferring the old wine to the new, which is special to our Gospel, has been variously interpreted. But the "new wine" seems plainly to be the evangelical freedom which Christ was introducing; and "the old," the opposite spirit of Judaism: men long accustomed to the latter could not be expected "straightway," or all at once, to take a linking for the former" - q.d., 'These inquiries about the difference between My disciples, and the Pharisees, and even John's ways of living, are not surprising; they are the effect of a natural revulsion against sudden change, which time will cure; the new wine will itself in time become old, and so acquire all the added charms of antiquity.'
Remarks:
(1) There may seem to be some inconsistency between the freedom and joy which our Lord here indirectly teaches to be characteristic of the new economy, and that sadness at His departure in Person from the Church which He intimates would be the proper feeling of all that love Him during the present state. But the two are quite consistent. We may sorrow for one thing and rejoice for another, even at the same time. The one, indeed, will necessarily chasten the other;, and so it is here. The liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free is a well-spring of resistless and commanded joy; nor is this a jot shared, but only chastened and refined, by the widowed feeling of Christ's absence. But neither is this sense of Christ's absence the less real and sad that we are taught to "rejoice in the Lord alway," "Whom having not seen we love, in whom believing we rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory," in the assurance that "when He who is our Life shall appear, we also shall appear with Him in glory." (2) In all transition states of the Church or of any section of it, from the worse to the better, two classes appear among the true-hearted, representing two extremes. In the one, the conservative element prevails; in the other, the progressive. The one, sympathizing with the movement, are yet afraid of its going too fast and too far: the other are impatient of half-measures. The sympathy of the one class with what is good in the movement is almost neutralized and lost by their apprehension of the evil that is likely to attend the change: the sympathy of the other class with it is so commanding, that they are blind to danger, and have no patience with that caution which seems to them only timidity and trimming. Thee are dangers on both sides. Of many who shrink in the day of trial, when one bold step would land them safely on the right side, it may be said, "The children are brought to the birth, and there is not strength to bring forth." To many reckless reformers, who mar their own work, it may be said, "Be not righteous overmuch, neither make thyself overwise: why shouldest thou destroy thyself?" Our Lord's teaching here, while it has a voice to those who unreasonably cling to what is antiquated, speaks still more clearly to those hasty reformers who have no patience with the timidity of their weaker brethren. What a gift to the Church, in times of life from the dead, are even a few men endued with the wisdom to steer the ship between those two rocks!