There do come times when its externals become antiquated, worn thin
and torn, and when patching is useless. Christian men, like others,
constitutionally incline to conservatism or to progress, and the one
temperament needs to be warned against obstinately preserving old
clothes, and the other against eagerly insisting that they are past
mending.

But a patch and a worn garment do not wholly describe the relations
of the old and the new. Freshly made wine, still fermenting, and
old, stiff wine-skins which have lost their elasticity suggest
further thoughts. Now we have to do with containing vessel _versus_
contents, with a fermenting force _versus_ stiffened forms. To put
that into these will destroy both. For example, if the struggle of
the Judaisers in the early Church had succeeded, and Christianity
had become a Jewish sect, it would have dwindled to nothing, as the
Jewish-minded Christians did. The wine must have bottles. Every
great spiritual renovating force must embody itself in institutions.
Spiritual emotions must express themselves in acts of worship,
spiritual convictions must speak in a creed. But the containing
vessel must be congruous with, and still more, it must be created by,
the contained force, as there are creatures who frame their shells
to fit the convolutions of their bodies, and build them up from their
own substance. Forms are good, as long as they can stretch if need be;
when they are too stiff to expand, they restrict rather than contain
the wine, and if short-sighted obstinacy insists on keeping _it_ in
_them_, there will be a great spill and loss of much that is
precious.