did not recommend themselves to me as anything more than skilful special pleading—­ evasions, not clearings up, of a moral difficulty.  For the problem was:  Given a good God, how can he have created mankind, knowing beforehand that the vast majority of those whom he had created were to be tortured for evermore?  Given a just God, how can he punish people for being sinful, when they have inherited a sinful nature without their own choice and of necessity?  Given a righteous God, how can he allow sin to exist for ever, so that evil shall be as eternal as good, and Satan shall reign in hell, as long as Christ in Heaven?  The answer of the Broad church school was, that the word “eternal” applied only to God and to life which was one with his; that “everlasting” only meant “lasting for an age”, and that while the punishment of the wicked might endure for ages it was purifying, not destroying, and at last all should be saved, and “God should be all in all”.  These explanations had (for a time) satisfied Mr. D——­, and I find him writing to me in answer to a letter of mine dated March 25th, 1872: 

“On the subject of Eternal punishment I have now not the remotest doubt.  It is impossible to handle the subject exhaustively in a letter, with a sermon to finish before night.  But you must get hold of a few valuable books that would solve all kinds of difficulties for you.  For most points read Stopford Brooke’s Sermons—­they are simply magnificent, and are called (1) Christian modern life, (2) Freedom in the Church of England, (3) and (least helpful) ‘Sermons’.  Then again there is an appendix to Llewellyn Davies’ ‘Manifestation of the Son of God’, which treats of forgiveness in a future state as related to Christ and Bible.  As to that special passage about the Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost (to which you refer), I will write you my notions on it in a future letter.”

A little later, according, he wrote: 

“With regard to your passage of difficulty about the unpardonable sin, I would say:  (1) If that sin is not to be forgiven in the world to come, it is implied that all other sins are forgiven in the world to come. (2) You must remember that our Lord’s parables and teachings mainly concerned contemporary events and people.  I mean, for instance, that in his great prophecy of judgment he simply was speaking of the destruction of the Jewish polity and nation.  The principles involved apply through all time, but He did not apply them except to the Jewish nation.  He was speaking then, not of ’the end of the world, (as is wrongly translated), but of ‘the end of the age’. (Every age is wound up with a judgment.  French Revolutions, Reformations, etc., are all ends of ages and judgments.) [Greek aion] does not, cannot, will not, and never did mean world, but age.  Well, then, he has been speaking of the Jewish people.  And he says that all words spoken against the Son of