ment in the
beholders. The terms commonly employed in the New Testament
(_s{=e}meion_, a sign; _dunamis_, power; less frequently _teras_, a
portent) are of deeper significance, and connote the inner nature of the
occurrence, either as requiring to be pondered for its meaning, or as
the product of a new and peculiar energy.

III

III

SYNOPSIS.--Arbitrary criticism of the Biblical narratives of the
raising of the "dead."--Facts which it ignores.--The subject related
to the phenomena of trance, and records of premature burial.--The
resuscitation in Elisha's tomb probably historical.--Jesus' raising
of the ruler's daughter plainly a case of this kind.--His raising of
the widow's son probably such.--The hypothesis that his raising of
Lazarus may also have been such critically examined.--The record
allows this supposition.--Further considerations favoring it: 1. The
real interests of Christianity secure.--2. The miracle as a work of
mercy.--3. Incompetency of the bystanders' opinion.--4. Congruity
with the general conception of the healing works of Jesus, as
wrought by a peculiar psychical power.--Other cases.--The
resurrection of Jesus an event in a wholly different order of
things.--The practical result of regarding these resuscitations as
in the order of nature.

Of resuscitation from apparent death seven cases in all are
recorded,--three in the Old Testament and four in the New. Some critics
arbitrarily reject all but one of these as legendary. Thus Oscar
Holzmann, in his recent _Leben Jesu_, treats the raising of the widow's
son, and of Lazarus. But he accepts the case of the ruler's daughter on
the ground that Jesus is reported as saying that it was not a case of
real but only of apparent death,--"the child is not dead, but sleepeth."
But for the preservation of this saving declaration in the record, this
case also would have been classed with the others as unhistorical. And
yet the admission of one clear case of simulated death, so like real
death as to deceive all the onlookers but Jesus, might reasonably check
the critic with the suggestion that it may not have been a solitary
case.[12] The headlong assumption involved in the discrimination made
between these two classes, viz. that in a case of apparent but unreal
death the primitive tradition can be depended on to put the fact upon
record, is in the highest degree arbitrary and unwarrant