Matthew 9:17

17. New wine Which has yet to ferment. Old bottles These bottles or flasks were made of leather skins. When old and rigid, they were liable to burst from the fermentation of the newly made wine. As here again the new wine is the symbol of the new dispensation of joy, and the old bottles are the symbol of the old dispensation of shadows; so the truth is again illustrated that new Christianity, with its living spirit, cannot afford to remain enveloped in the old skin of ascetic Judaism. And this is the answer to the disciples of John, who wonder at the new fashion of Christ’s disciples, who do not disfigure their faces, according to the old custom with much fasting.

Luke (Luke 5:39) adds a sort of apology by our Lord for the prejudices expressed in the query of John’s disciples. “No man also having drunk the old wine straightway desireth the new; for he saith, The old is better.” So it takes a while for the disciple of the old dispensation to accommodate his feelings to the new order of things. His attachments to the institutions so mellowed, like wine, by time, induce him to prefer them from their very antiquity. He saith the old is better. There is, indeed, an excellence about the old, there is something exciting and fermenting about the new; but the old must be worn out and disappear. The new is truly an advance in excellence, and it is a mere customary taste that induces the man to repeat the constant saw “The old is better.”