Go tell it on the mountain - James Baldwin [49]
‘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 bow, 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 the 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 whore houses 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 to-night, 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 fe