Risen From the Dead.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 7664, 26 June 1896, Page 4

Risen From the Dead.

The inhabitants of a village in Astrakhan have been lately astonished by the reappearance among them of a man to whose death and burial they can testify of (heir own knowledge. The man's account) of the circumstances of his resurrection is as follows :— He was taken seriously ill at harvest time in 1891, grew worse, and Jied within a few days ; he remembers how they washed him, dressed him, and put him in the coffin ; he heard how they cime and read the funeral service over him, how the choir sang, and his wife cried ; he realised that they were going to bury him, and he tried to cry out, but could nob utter any sound. They took him to the churchyard and left the coffin on the grass, for the grave was not yet finished. When tho grave-diggers went to take their dinner the dead man's forces came back to him, and he pushed off the lid. He was afraid to return to the village, lest the people should say that he waß a sorcorer, and should kill him in earnest, so he pub back the lid on the coffin and went into the forest. He wandered about from village to village for four years, but at last he could no longer resist the desire to see his wife and family once more, and besides he needed a passport. So he returned. It is remembered in the village that as the grave-diggers .vere putting the coffin into the grave one of them remarked that it was very light ; iinother rejoined that that was not surprising, for after tho funeral service the body of a sinner is heavy, but that of a just man is light.