Was it nothing to him, think you, to leave his own country, and at God's sending to go into a strange land, which God promised him and his seed forever, but in all his life he gave him never a foot? Was it no trouble, that his cousin Loth and himself were fain to part company, because their servants could not agree together? Though he recovered Loth again from the three kings, was his capture no trouble to him, think you, in the meanwhile? Was the destruction of the five cities no heaviness to his heart? Any man would think so, who readeth in the story what labour he made to save them. His heart was, I daresay, in no little sorrow, when he was fain to let Abimelech the king have his wife. Though God provided to keep her undefiled and turned all to wealth, yet it was no little woe to him in the meantime. What continual grief was it to his heart, many a long day, that he had no child begotten of his own body? He that doubteth thereof shall find in Genesis Abraham's own moan made to God. No man doubteth but Ismael was great comfort unto him at his birth; and was it no grief, then, when he must cast out the mother and the child both? As for Isaac, who was the child of the promise, although God kept his life, that was unlooked for. Yet while the loving father bound him and went about to behead him and offer him up in sacrifice, who but himself can conceive what heaviness his heart had then? I should suppose (since you speak of Lazarus) that Lazarus' own death panged him not so sore. Then, as Lazarus' pain was patiently borne, so was Abraham's taken not only patiently but--which is a thing much more meritorious--of obedience willingly. And therefore, even if Abraham had not far excelled Lazarus in merit of reward (as he did indeed) for many other things besides, and especially for that he was a special patriarch of the faith, yet would he have far surpassed him even by the merit of that tribulation well taken here for God's sake too. And so serveth for your purpose no man less than Abraham!