This expression of a thought by no means improbable, gives an easy chance to shallow punsters; but ridicule is no weapon against reason. Why should not the case be so? Why should not Earth's own satellite, void, as yet, be on the resurrection of all flesh, the raft whereon to float away Earth's evil? Read of it astronomically; think of it as connected with idols; regard it as the ruler of earth's night; consider that the place of a Gehenna must be somewhere; and what is there in my fancy quite improbable? I do not dogmatize as that the fact is so, but only suggest a definite place at least as likely as any other hitherto suggested. Think how that awful, melancholy eye looks down on deeds of darkness how many midnight crimes, murders, thefts, adulteries, and witchcrafts, that would have shrunk into nonentity from open, honest day, have paled the conscious Moon! Add to all this, it is the only world, besides our own, whereof astronomers can tell us, It is fallen. AN OFFER. Nothing were easier than to have made this book a long one; but that was not the writer's object: as well because of the musty Greek proverb about long books; which in every time and country are sure never to be read through by one in a thousand; as because it is always wiser to suggest than to exhaust a topic; which may be as "a fruit-tree yielding fruit after its kind whose seed is in itself." The writer then intended only to touch upon a few salient points, and not to discuss every question, however they might crowd upon his mind: time and space alike with mental capabilities forbade an effort so gigantic: added to which, such a course seemed to be unnecessary, as the rule of probability, thus illustrated, might be applied by others in every similar instance. Still, as the errand of this book is usefulness, and its author's hope is, under Heaven, to do good, one personal hint shall here be thrown upon the highway. Without arrogating to myself the wisdom or the knowledge to solve one in twenty of the doubts possible to be propounded; without also designing even to attempt such solutions, unless well assured of the genuine anxiety of the doubter; and preliminarizing the consideration, that a fitting diffidence in the advocate's own powers is no reason why he should not make wide efforts in his holy cause; that, such reasonable essays to do good have no sort of brotherhood with a fanatical Spiritual Quixotism; and that, to my own apprehensions, the doubts of a rationalizing mind are in the nature of honourable foes, to be treated with delicacy, reverence, and kindness, rather than with a cold distance and an ill-concealed contempt; preliminarizing, lastly, the thought--"Who is sufficient for these things?"--I nevertheless thus offer, according to the grace and power given to me, my best but humble efforts so far to dissipate the doubts of some respecting any scriptural fact, as may lie within the province of showing or attempting to show its previous credibility.