Luke 8:51

And when he came to the house, he suffered not any man to enter in with him, save Peter, and John, and James and the father of the maiden and her mother. And all were weeping and bewailing her: and he said, Weep not; for she is not dead, but sleepeth.

Not dead, but sleepeth ... Thus Jesus provided his enemies with a crutch to sustain their wicked unbelief; and which, if he had not granted it, would probably have resulted in their killing him then and there. It is also evident that the crutch was such that only a hopeless moral cripple could have found it helpful. The true fact of the maiden's actual death was so undeniable that only a mind maddened by the most antagonistic and frenzied unbelief could have accepted Jesus' words in a purely literal sense. When scholars follow the lead of those Pharisees in so understanding Jesus' words here, one beholds the real fundamentalism, such men becoming the true fundamentalists, a status most of them would vehemently deny.