mbodiment of a
departed spirit recalled from another world. Were these the only two
cases of restoration to life in the ministry of Jesus, it is most
probable that they would be regarded as of the same kind.

The raising of Lazarus[21] presents peculiar features, in view of which
it is generally regarded as of another kind, and the greatest of
miracles, so stupendous that the Rev. W. J. Dawson, in his recent _Life
of Christ_, written from an evangelical standpoint, says of it: "Even
the most devout mind may be forgiven occasional pangs of incredulity."
But the considerations already presented are certainly sufficient to
justify a reexamination of the case. And it is to be borne in mind that
the question at issue is, not what the eye-witnesses at that time
believed, not what the Church from that time to this has believed, not
what we are willing to believe, or would like to believe, but what all
the facts with any bearing on the case, taken together, fully justify us
in believing as to the real nature of it.

What Jesus is recorded as saying of it is, of course, of prime
importance. "Our friend Lazarus is fallen asleep, but I go that I may
awake him out of sleep." Were this all, the case might easily have been
classed as one of trance. The disciples, however, understood Jesus to
speak of natural sleep. "Then Jesus therefore said unto them plainly,
_Lazarus is dead_." Tradition puts the maximum meaning into this word
"dead." But if this word here qualifies the preceding word, "fallen
asleep," so also is it qualified by that; the two are mutually
explanatory, not contradictory. These alternatives are before us: Is the
maximum or the minimum meaning to be assigned to the crucial word
"dead"? For the minimum, one can say that a deathly trance, already made
virtual death by immediate interment, would amply justify Jesus in using
the word "dead" in order to impress the disciples with the gravity of
the case, as not a natural but a deathly, and, in the existing
situation, a fatal sleep. For the maximum, no more can be advanced than
the hazardous assertion that Jesus _must_ have used the word with
technical precision in its customary sense; an assertion of course
protected from disproof by our ignorance of the actual fact.[22] But
whatever support this view of the case derives from such ignorance is
overbalanced by the support supplied to the other view by the long
history of revivals from the deathly trance, and by the probabi