able.

The scepticism which lightly contradicts the Biblical narratives of the
raising of the "dead" to life is seemingly ignorant of facts that go far
to place these upon firm ground as historical occurrences. Catalepsy,
or the simulation of death by a trance, in which the body is sometimes
cold and rigid, sensation gone, the heart still, is well known to
medical men.[13] In early times such a condition would inevitably have
been regarded and treated as actual death, without the least suspicion
that it was not so. Even now, the dreadful mistake of so regarding it
sometimes occurs. So cautious a journal as the London _Spectator_ a few
years ago expressed the belief that "a distinct percentage" of premature
burials "occurs every year" in England.

The proper line of critical approach to the study of the Biblical
narratives of the raising of the "dead" is through the well-known facts
of the deathlike trance and premature burial.

Where burial occurred, as in the East, immediately after the apparent
death,[14] resuscitation must have been rare. Yet cases of it were not
unknown. Pliny has a chapter "on those who have revived on being carried
forth for burial." Lord Bacon states that of this there have been "very
many cases." A French writer of the eighteenth century, Bruhier, in his
"_Dissertations sur l'Incertitude de la Mort et l'Abus des
Enterrements_," records seventy-two cases of mistaken pronouncement of
death, fifty-three of revival in the coffin before burial, and
fifty-four of burial alive. A locally famous and thoroughly attested
case in this country is that of the Rev. William Tennent, pastor in
Freehold, New Jersey, in the eighteenth century, who lay apparently dead
for three days, reviving from trance just as his delayed funeral was
about to proceed. One who keeps a scrap-book could easily collect quite
an assortment of such cases, and of such others as have a tragic ending,
both from domestic and foreign journals. A work published some years ago
by Dr. F. Hartmann[15] exhibits one hundred and eight cases as typical
among over seven hundred that have been authenticated.[16]

Facts like these have been strangely overlooked in the hasty judgment
prompted by prejudice against whatever has obtained credence as
miraculous. Some significant considerations must be seriously
entertained.

It cannot be that no such facts occurred in the long periods covered by
the Biblical writers. Occurring, it is extremely improb