arch 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 Man will be
forgiven. But there is a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit of God--there
is a confusion of good with evil, of light with darkness--which goes
deeper down than this. When a nation has lost the faculty of
distinguishing love from hatred, the spirit of falsehood and hypocrisy
from the spirit of truth, God from the Devil--_then its doom is
pronounced_--the decree is gone forth against it. As the doom of Judaism,
guilty of this sin, _was then_ pronounced. As the _decree against it had
already gone forth. It is a national warning, not an individual one. It
applies to two ages of this world, and not to two worlds_. All its
t