presence involved and brought. They were a glad company, and
Christians ought now to be joyous, because the bridegroom is still
with them, and the more really so by reason of His ascending up where
He was before. We have seen Him again, as He promised, and our hearts
should rejoice with a joy which no man can take from us.

Next, we note Christ's clear prevision of His death, the violence of
which is hinted at in the words, 'Shall be taken away from them.'
Further, we note the great principle that outward forms must follow
inward realities, and are genuine only when they are the expression of
states of mind and feeling. That is a far-reaching truth, ever being
forgotten in the tyranny which the externals of religion exercise. Let
the free spirit have its own way, and cut its own channels. Laughter
may be as devout as fasting. Joy is to be expressed in religion as
well as grief. No outward form is worth anything unless the inner man
vitalises it, and such a mere form is not simply valueless, but may
quickly become hypocrisy and conscious make-believe.

III. Jesus adds two similes, which are condensed parables, to deal
with a wider question rising out of the preceding principles. The
difference between His disciples' religious demeanour and that of
their critics is not merely that the former are not now in a mood for
fasting, but that a new spirit is beginning to work in them, and
therefore it will go hard with a good many old forms besides fasting.

The essential point in both the similes of the raw cloth stitched on
to the old, and of the new wine poured into stiff old skins, is the
necessary incongruity between old forms and new tendencies. Undressed
cloth is sure to shrink when wetted, and, being stronger than the old,
to draw its frayed edges away. So, if new truth, or new conceptions of