Go Tell It on the Mountain

by James Baldwin

  But Gabriel did not want his performance—the most important of his career so far, and on which so much depended—to be obliterated; he did not want to be dismissed as a mere boy who was scarcely ready to be counted in the race, much less to be considered a candidate for the prize. He fasted on his knees before God and did not cease, daily and nightly, to pray that God might work through him a mighty work and cause all men to see that, indeed, God’s hand was on him, that he was the Lord’s anointed.

  Deborah, unasked, fasted with him, and prayed, and took his best black suit away, so that it would be clean and mended and freshly pressed for the great day. And she took it away again, immediately afterward, so that it would be no less splendid on the Sunday of the great dinner that was officially to punctuate the revival. This Sunday was to be a feast day for everyone, but more especially for the twenty-four elders, who were, that day, to be gloriously banqueted at the saints’ expense and labor.

  On the evening when he was to preach, he and Deborah walked together to the great, lighted lodge hall that had but lately held a dance band, and that the saints had rented for the duration of the revival. The service had already begun; lights spilled outward into the streets, music filled the air, and passers-by paused to listen and to peek in through the half-open doors. He wanted all of them to enter; he wanted to run through the streets and drag all sinners in to hear the Word of God. Yet, as they approached the doors, the fear held in check so many days and nights rose in him again, and he thought how he would stand tonight, so high, and all alone, to vindicate the testimony that had fallen from his lips, that God had called him to preach.

  “Sister Deborah,” he said, suddenly, as they stood before the doors, “you sit where I can see you?”

  “I sure will do that, Reverend,” she said. “You go on up there. Trust God.”

  Without another word he turned, leaving her in the door, and walked up the long aisle to the pulpit. They were all there already, big, comfortable, ordained men; they smiled and nodded as he mounted the pulpit steps; and one of them said, nodding toward the congregation, which was as spirited as any evangelist could wish: “Just getting these folks warmed up for you, boy. Want to see you make them holler tonight.”

  He smiled in the instant before he knelt down at his thronelike chair to pray; and thought again, as he had been thinking for eleven nights, that there was about his elders an ease in the holy place, and a levity, that made his soul uneasy. While he sat, waiting, he saw that Deborah had found a seat in the very front of the congregation, just below the pulpit, and sat with her Bible folded on her lap.

  When, at last, the Scripture lesson read, the testimonies in, the songs sung, the collection taken up, he was introduced—by the elder who had preached the night before—and found himself on his feet, moving toward the pulpit where the great Bible awaited him, and over that sheer drop the murmuring congregation, he felt a giddy terror that he stood so high, and with this, immediately, a pride and joy unspeakable that God had placed him there.

  He did not begin with a “shout” song, or with a fiery testimony; but in a dry, matter-of-fact voice, which trembled only a little, asked them to look with him at the sixth chapter of Isaiah, and the fifth verse; and he asked Deborah to read it aloud for him.

  And she read, in a voice unaccustomedly strong: “ ‘Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.’ ”

  Silence filled the lodge hall after she had read this sentence. For a moment Gabriel was terrified by the eyes on him, and by the elders at his back, and could not think how to go on. Then he looked at Deborah, and began.

  These words had been uttered by the prophet Isaiah, who had been called the Eagle-eyed because he had looked down the dark centuries and foreseen the birth of Christ. It was Isaiah also who had prophesied that a man should be as a hiding-place from the wind and tempest, Isaiah who had described the way of holiness, saying that the parched ground should become a pool, and the thirsty lands springs of water: the very desert should rejoice, and blossom as the rose. It was Isaiah who had prophesied, saying: “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given; and the government shall be upon His shoulder.” This was a man whom God had raised in righteousness, whom God had chosen to do many mighty works, yet this man, beholding the vision of God’s glory, had cried out: “Woe is me!”

  “Yes!” cried a woman. “Tell it!”

  “There is a lesson for us all in this cry of Isaiah’s, a meaning for us all, a hard saying. If we have never cried this cry then we have never known salvation; if we fail to live with this cry, hourly, daily, in the midnight hour, and in the light of the noonday sun, then salvation has left us and our feet have laid hold on Hell. Yes, bless our God forever! When we cease to tremble before Him we have turned out of the way.”

  “Amen!” cried a voice from far away. “Amen! You preach it, boy!”

  He paused for only a moment and mopped his brow, the heart within him great with fear and trembling, and with power.

  “For let us remember that the wages of sin is death; that it is written, and cannot fail, the soul that sinneth, it shall die. Let us remember that we are born in sin, in sin did our mothers conceive us—sin reigns in all our members, sin is the foul heart’s natural liquid, sin looks out of the eye, amen, and leads to lust, sin is in the hearing of the ear, and leads to folly, sin sits on the tongue, and leads to murder. Yes! Sin is the only heritage of the natural man, sin bequeathed us by our natural father, that fallen Adam, whose apple sickens and will sicken all generations living, and generations yet unborn! It was sin that drove the son of the morning out of Heaven, sin that drove Adam out of Eden, sin that caused Cain to slay his brother, sin that built the tower of Babel, sin that caused the fire to fall on Sodom—sin, from the very foundations of the world, living and breathing in the heart of man, that causes women to bring forth their children in agony and darkness, bows down the backs of men with terrible labor, keeps the empty belly empty, keeps the table bare, sends our children, dressed in rags, out into the whorehouses and dance halls of the world!”

  “Amen! Amen!”

  “Ah. Woe is me. Woe is me. Yes, beloved—there is no righteousness in man. All men’s hearts are evil, all men are liars—only God is true. Hear David’s cry: ‘The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.’ Hear Job, sitting in dust and ashes, his children dead, his substance gone, surrounded by false comforters: ‘Yea, though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.’ And hear Paul, who had been Saul, a persecutor of the redeemed, struck down on the road to Damascus, and going forth to preach the gospel: ‘And if ye be Christ’s, then ye are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise!’ ”

  “Oh, yes,” cried one of the elders, “bless our God forever!”

  “For God had a plan. He would not suffer the soul of man to die, but had prepared a plan for his salvation. In the beginning, way back there at the laying of the foundations of the world, God had a plan, amen! to bring all flesh to a knowledge of the truth. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God—yes, and in Him was life, hallelujah! and this life was the light of men. Dearly beloved, when God saw how men’s hearts waxed evil, how they turned aside, each to his own way, how they married and gave in marriage, how they feasted on ungodly meat and drink, and lusted, and blasphemed, and lifted up their hearts in sinful pride against the Lord—oh, then, the Son of God, the blessed lamb that taketh away the sins of the world, this Son of God who was the Word made flesh, the fulfillment of the promise—oh, then, He turned to His Father, crying: ‘Father, prepare me a body and I’ll go down and redeem sinful man.’ ”

  “So glad this evening, praise the Lord!”

  “Fathers, here tonight, have you ever had a son who went astray? Mothers, have you seen your daughters cut
down in the pride and fullness of youth? Has any man here heard the command which came to Abraham, that he must make his son a living sacrifice on God’s altar? Fathers, think of your sons, how you tremble for them, and try to lead them right, try to feed them so they’ll grow up strong; think of your love for your son, and how any evil that befalls him cracks up the heart, and think of the pain that God has borne, sending down His only begotten Son, to dwell among men on the sinful earth, to be persecuted, to suffer, to bear the cross and die—not for His own sins, like our natural sons, but for the sins of all the world, to take away the sins of all the world—that we might have the joy bells ringing deep in our hearts tonight!”

  “Praise Him!” cried Deborah, and he had never heard her voice so loud.

  “Woe is me, for when God struck the sinner, the sinner’s eyes were opened, and he saw himself in all his foulness naked before God’s glory. Woe is me! For the moment of salvation is a blinding light, cracking down into the heart from Heaven—Heaven so high, and the sinner so low. Woe is me! For unless God raised the sinner, he would never rise again!”

  “Yes, Lord! I was there!”

  How many here tonight had fallen where Isaiah fell? How many had cried—as Isaiah cried? How many could testify, as Isaiah testified, “Mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts”? Ah, whosoever failed to have this testimony should never see His face, but should be told, on that great day: “Depart from me, ye that work iniquity,” and be hurled forever into the lake of fire prepared for Satan and all his angels. Oh, would the sinner rise tonight, and walk the little mile to his salvation, here to the mercy seat?

  And he waited. Deborah watched him with a calm, strong smile. He looked out over their faces, their faces all upturned to him. He saw joy in those faces, and holy excitement, and belief—and they all looked up to him. Then, far in the back, a boy rose, a tall, dark boy, his white shirt open at the neck and torn, his trousers dusty and shabby and held up with an old necktie, and he looked across the immeasurable, dreadful, breathing distance up to Gabriel, and began to walk down the long, bright aisle. Someone cried: “Oh, bless the Lord!” and tears filled Gabriel’s eyes. The boy knelt, sobbing, at the mercy seat, and the church began to sing.

  Then Gabriel turned away, knowing that this night he had run well, and that God had used him. The elders all were smiling, and one of them took him by the hand, and said: “That was mighty fine, boy. Mighty fine.”

  Then came the Sunday of the spectacular dinner that was to end the revival—for which dinner Deborah and all the other women had baked, roasted, fried, and boiled for many days beforehand. He jokingly suggested, to repay her a little for her contention that he was the best preacher of the revival, that she was the best cook among the women. She timidly suggested that he was here at a flattering disadvantage, for she had heard all of the preachers, but he had not, for a very long time, eaten another woman’s cooking.

  When the Sunday came, and he found himself once more among the elders, about to go to the table, Gabriel felt a drop in his happy, proud anticipation. He was not comfortable with these men—that was it—it was difficult for him to accept them as his elders and betters in the faith. They seemed to him so lax, so nearly worldly; they were not like those holy prophets of old who grew thin and naked in the service of the Lord. These, God’s ministers, had indeed grown fat, and their dress was rich and various. They had been in the field so long that they did not tremble before God any more. They took God’s power as their due, as something that made the more exciting their own assured, special atmosphere. They each had, it seemed, a bagful of sermons often preached; and knew, in the careless lifting of an eye, which sermon to bring to which congregation. Though they preached with great authority, and brought souls low before the altar—like so many ears of corn lopped off by the hired laborer in his daily work—they did not give God the glory, nor count it as glory at all; they might as easily have been, Gabriel thought, highly paid circus-performers, each with his own special dazzling gift. Gabriel discovered that they spoke, jokingly, of the comparative number of souls each of them had saved, as though they were keeping score in a pool-room. And this offended him and frightened him. He did not want, ever, to hold the gift of God so lightly.

  They, the ministers, were being served alone in the upper room of the lodge hall—the less-specialized workers in Christ’s vineyard were being fed at a table downstairs—and the women kept climbing up and down the stairs with loaded platters to see that they ate their fill. Deborah was one of the serving-women, and though she did not speak, and despite his discomfort, he nearly burst each time she entered the room, with the pride he knew she felt to see him sitting there, so serene and manly, among all these celebrated others, in the severe black and white that was his uniform. And if only, he felt, his mother could be there to see—her Gabriel, mounted so high!

  But, near the end of the dinner, when the women brought up the pies, and coffee, and cream, and when the talk around the table had become more jolly and more good-naturedly loose than ever, the door had but barely closed behind the women when one of the elders, a heavy, cheery, sandy-haired man, whose face, testifying no doubt to the violence of his beginnings, was splashed with freckles like dried blood, laughed and said, referring to Deborah, that there was a holy woman, all right! She had been choked so early on white men’s milk, and it remained so sour in her belly yet, that she would never be able, now, to find a nigger who would let her taste his richer, sweeter substance. Everyone at the table roared, but Gabriel felt his blood turn cold that God’s ministers should be guilty of such abominable levity, and that that woman sent by God to comfort him, and without whose support he might readily have fallen by the wayside, should be held in such dishonor. They felt, he knew, that among themselves a little rude laughter could do no harm; they were too deeply rooted in the faith to be made to fall by such an insignificant tap from Satan’s hammer. But he stared at their boisterous, laughing faces, and felt that they would have much to answer for on the day of judgment, for they were stumbling-stones in the path of the true believer.

  Now the sandy-haired man, struck by Gabriel’s bitter, astounded face, bit his laughter off, and said: “What’s the matter, son? I hope I ain’t said nothing to offend you?”

  “She read the Bible for you the night you preached, didn’t she?” asked another of the elders, in a conciliatory tone.

  “That woman,” said Gabriel, feeling a roaring in his head, “is my sister in the Lord.”

  “Well, Elder Peters here, he just didn’t know that,” said someone else. “He sure didn’t mean no harm.”

  “Now, you ain’t going to get mad?” asked Elder Peters, kindly—yet there remained, to Gabriel’s fixed attention, something mocking in his face and voice. “You ain’t going to spoil our little dinner?”

  “I don’t think it’s right,” said Gabriel, “to talk evil about nobody. The Word tell me it ain’t right to hold nobody up to scorn.”

  “Now you just remember,” Elder Peters said, as kindly as before, “you’s talking to your elders.”

  “Then it seem to me,” he said, astonished at his boldness, “that if I got to look to you for a example, you ought to be a example.”

  “Now, you know,” said someone else, jovially, “you ain’t fixing to make that woman your wife or nothing like that—so ain’t no need to get all worked up and spoil our little gathering. Elder Peters didn’t mean no harm. If you don’t never say nothing worse than that, you can count yourself already up there in the Kingdom with the chosen.”

  And at this a small flurry of laughter swept over the table; they went back to their eating and drinking, as though the matter were finished.

  Yet Gabriel felt that he had surprised them; he had found them out and they were a little ashamed and confounded before his purity. And he understood suddenly the words of Christ, where it was written: “Many are called but few are chosen.” Yes, and he looked around the table, already jovial again, but rather watchful now, too
, of him—and he wondered who, of all these, would sit in glory at the right hand of the Father?

  And then, as he sat there, remembering again Elder Peters’ boisterous, idle remark, this remark shook together in him all those shadowy doubts and fears, those hesitations and tendernesses, which were his in relation to Deborah, and the sum of which he now realized was his certainty that there was in that relationship something foreordained. It came to him that, as the Lord had given him Deborah, to help him to stand, so the Lord had sent him to her, to raise her up, to release her from that dishonor which was hers in the eyes of men. And this idea filled him, in a moment, wholly, with the intensity of a vision: what better woman could be found? She was not like the mincing daughters of Zion! She was not to be seen prancing lewdly through the streets, eyes sleepy and mouth half open with just, or to be found mewing under midnight fences, uncovered, uncovering some black boy’s hanging curse! No, their married bed would be holy, and their children would continue the line of the faithful, a royal line. And, fired with this, a baser fire stirred in him also, rousing a slumbering fear, and he remembered (as the table, the ministers, the dinner, and the talk all burst in on him again) that Paul had written: “It is better to marry than to burn.”

  Yet, he thought, he would hold his peace awhile; he would seek to know more clearly the Lord’s mind in this matter. For he remembered how much older she was than he—eight years; and he tried to imagine, for the first time in his life, that dishonor to which Deborah had been forced so many years ago by white men: her skirts above her head, her secrecy discovered—by white men. How many? How had she borne it? Had she screamed? Then he thought (but it did not really trouble him, for if Christ to save him could be crucified, he, for Christ’s greater glory, could well be mocked) of what smiles would be occasioned, what filthy conjecture, barely sleeping now, would mushroom upward overnight like Jonah’s gourd, when people heard that he and Deborah were going to be married. She, who had been the living proof and witness of their daily shame, and who had become their holy fool—and he, who had been the untamable despoiler of their daughters, and thief of their women, their walking prince of darkness! And he smiled, watching the elders’ well-fed faces and their grinding jaws—unholy pastors all, unfaithful stewards; he prayed that he would never be so fat, or so lascivious, but that God should work through him a mighty work: to ring, it might be, through ages yet unborn, as sweet, solemn, mighty proof of His everlasting love and mercy. He trembled with the presence that surrounded him now; he could scarcely keep his seat. He felt that light shone down on him from Heaven, on him, the chosen; he felt as Christ must have felt in the temple, facing His so utterly confounded elders; and he lifted up his eyes, not caring for their glances or their clearing of throats, and the silence that abruptly settled over the table, thinking: “Yes. God works in many mysterious ways His wonders to perform.”