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The Desire of Ages
Nor could the principles of Christ’s teaching be united with the
forms of Pharisaism. Christ was not to close up the breach that had
been made by the teachings of John. He would make more distinct
the separation between the old and the new. Jesus further illustrated
this fact, saying, “No man putteth new wine into old bottles; else the
new wine will burst the bottles, and be spilled, and the bottles shall
perish.” The skin bottles which were used as vessels to contain the
new wine, after a time became dry and brittle, and were then worthless
to serve the same purpose again. In this familiar illustration Jesus
presented the condition of the Jewish leaders. Priests and scribes and
rulers were fixed in a rut of ceremonies and traditions. Their hearts
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had become contracted, like the dried-up wine skins to which He had
compared them. While they remained satisfied with a legal religion, it
was impossible for them to become the depositaries of the living truth
of heaven. They thought their own righteousness all-sufficient, and
did not desire that a new element should be brought into their religion.
The good will of God to men they did not accept as something apart
from themselves. They connected it with their own merit because of
their good works. The faith that works by love and purifies the soul
could find no place for union with the religion of the Pharisees, made
up of ceremonies and the injunctions of men. The effort to unite the
teachings of Jesus with the established religion would be vain. The
vital truth of God, like fermenting wine, would burst the old, decaying
bottles of the Pharisaical tradition.
The Pharisees thought themselves too wise to need instruction, too
righteous to need salvation, too highly honored to need the honor that
comes from Christ. The Saviour turned away from them to find others
who would receive the message of heaven. In the untutored fishermen,
in the publican at the market place, in the woman of Samaria, in the
common people who heard Him gladly, He found His new bottles for
the new wine. The instrumentalities to be used in the gospel work are
those souls who gladly receive the light which God sends them. These
are His agencies for imparting the knowledge of truth to the world. If
through the grace of Christ His people will become new bottles, He
will fill them with new wine.
The teaching of Christ, though it was represented by the new wine,
was not a new doctrine, but the revelation of that which had been taught
from the beginning. But to the Pharisees the truth of God had lost its