In God's way with His elect, His sympathy comes first, and then His power—the sympathy which accompanies them through their sorrow, and then the power which delivers them out of it. We are prone to desire present ease, and would have all inconvenience and contradiction removed at once. But this is not His way. When at Bethany, "Jesus wept"; and afterward, but not till afterward, He said, "Lazarus, come forth." Nature would have had the death, which had called forth the tears, anticipated. We judge that we might have been spared many a trial, and we reason it out as a clear, unquestioned conclusion, that God has power. As the friends of the family at Bethany said, "Could not this man, which opened the eyes of the blind, have caused that even this man should not have died?" But they reasoned imperfectly, because they reasoned partially; that is, only on the power of Christ.